Adventurer Concludes 28‑Year, 31,000‑Mile Worldwide Walk, Returns to Hull Mother’s Home

HULL, England — Karl Bushby completed his 28‑year global walking odyssey Monday by returning to his mother’s home in northern England. He embraced his emotional mother, Angela, outside her row house amid a crowd of journalists, a documentary film crew and a large banner that read “Welcome Home Son.”

Bushby, a former paratrooper who was 29 when he left, originally walked away from the family residence to a Royal Air Force base near Oxford and then flew to South America. He began his trek on Nov. 1, 1998, and returned 28 years later as a 57‑year‑old—softer, grayer and weathered but far more worldly.

“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. “The kindness of strangers, so many, from individuals to nation states, got me back today. I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”

He logged 31,000 miles (about 50,000 km) across four continents and 30 countries. To avoid any transport, he navigated shifting ice over the Bering Strait, swam the Caspian Sea and the English Channel, and relied on a two‑wheeled cart for the final miles home.

On the final leg, helicopter footage showed Bushby surrounded by supporters as he pushed his cart toward home after receiving a hero’s welcome at City Hall. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he joked to the crowd. “Is that it, is it done?”

The adventure was inspired by a conversation with his father, Keith, an army veteran, who mentioned a special‑forces debate about walking from London to New York via the Bering land bridge—an idea thought to have been used by early humans during lower sea levels.

Perilous jungles, scorching deserts and frozen tundra slowed him, while bureaucratic hurdles often halted progress for months. He evaded war in the Darién Gap in 2001 and spent 18 days in jail after crossing a restricted border zone in Panama.

A near‑fatal Bering Strait crossing in 2006, aided by American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer, involved a helicopter rescue, a polar‑bear standoff and a nightmarish plunge that cost them most of their supplies. The pair were later jailed and faced deportation for illegal entry into Russia.

Navigating Russian visa restrictions took nearly a decade, with weather limiting travel to only a few months each year. When Russia denied him a visa in 2012, Bushby staged a protest walk from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., which eventually secured the necessary paperwork.

He planned to reunite with his son, Adam, whom he had seen only a handful of times during the journey, and to meet his 12‑year‑old granddaughter for the first time.

The final steps took him across Hull, pushing his cart to his mother’s house after a decade apart. “It’s been a week of lasts,” he told the crowd. “The last day in the tent. The last day on the road. After 28 years you couldn’t ask for more than this. This is the last of the last few steps almost to my mother’s house.”

Melley reported from London.

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