Karl Bushby’s mother had one question when he finally walked up to her front door in Hull on Monday, November 2: “Where have you been?”
The answer is 28 years, four continents and roughly 31,000 miles on foot. The former paratrooper left Punta Arenas at the southern tip of Chile on November 1, 1998, and vowed not to come home until he had covered every yard of the route without a boat, plane or car. He crossed the Bering Strait on sea ice, swam the Caspian Sea in 2024 and swam the English Channel in early October before the last stretch north through England.
Hundreds of people cheered him into the city center, where he pushed his handcart, nicknamed “The Beast,” toward City Hall before heading to his mother’s row house. A banner on the house read “Welcome Home Son.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he told the crowd. “Is that it, is it done?”
A reunion a decade in the making
Bushby, now 57, had not seen his mother, Angela, in ten years. She wept as she wrapped her arms around him in front of a wall of cameras and a documentary crew. “Behave yourself, mother,” he joked. “Get yourself together.”
At a press conference afterwards he was more candid. “It was kind of almost shocking to see my mother after so long,” he said. “She’s changed a lot. We’ve all changed a lot in that time.” He described the moment as “one great, big, blurry mess” he was still processing.
The homecoming came with other firsts. On his return to Britain he caught up with his son Adam, now 36, whom he had rarely seen, and met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time.
“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. “I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”
The final month, by the numbers
Badiyaa covered Bushby’s Channel landing in October, when Hull was still about 250 miles away. Here is how the closing chapter fits together:
- October 5, 1998: Bushby leaves Hull for South America.
- November 1, 1998: the first step out of Punta Arenas.
- October 5, 2026: he wades ashore at Shakespeare Beach near Dover after swimming the Channel, exactly 28 years after leaving Hull.
- November 2, 2026: he reaches his mother’s door, one day after the 28th anniversary of the start.
His own expedition site puts the journey at 10,230 days and an estimated 75 million steps. Spread across the whole trip, 31,000 miles over 10,230 days works out to about three miles a day, which sounds slow until you remember that the total includes years lost to visa bans, the 2008 financial crash and the pandemic. The site also lists about 400 kilometers from Dover to Hull at the landing; covering that in four weeks means a pace of roughly 14 kilometers, or nine miles, a day on the home stretch.
What happens to a man who has walked for 28 years
Bushby has been open about dreading the finish. “It’s like stepping across the event horizon into a black hole,” he said in an interview published this week. “I have no idea what’s about to happen in my life.”
The calendar is already filling. His website lists a six-date speaking tour starting in Shrewsbury on November 12, with a Hull show on November 13 and dates in Nottingham, York, Bury St Edmunds and Buxton through December 17. A sequel to his memoir Giant Steps is in the works, and the filmmaker Werner Herzog, who met him on the beach at Dover, is making a documentary about the walk.
For now, the man who refused to go home for 28 years is moving into his mother’s basement. “The only way I think, you know, you get over that is just get another mission, another passion and get busy,” he said. “That’s what I intend on doing.”
Further reading
Image: Hullian111, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
