After 28 years and 31,000 miles on foot, Karl Bushby is home in Hull

The walk

Karl Bushby, 57, a former British paratrooper from Hull, set out in 1998 to walk around the world and return home entirely on foot. He arrived on 2 November 2026 after roughly 31,000 miles through 30 countries, and embraced his mother, Angela, saying '28 years! I could not have imagined this.'

Along the way

He crossed the Darien Gap, was arrested in Russia, swam more than 170 miles across the Caspian Sea to avoid Iran and Russia, and swam the English Channel after the Channel Tunnel operator refused to let him walk the service tunnel. In 2006 he and Dimitri Kieffer made the first recorded crossing of the frozen Bering Strait on foot.