Twenty-eight years after setting out from the bottom of South America with about $500 in his pocket, former British paratrooper Karl Bushby is walking the final stretch of the longest continuous foot journey ever attempted. He touched British soil at Shakespeare Beach near Dover on October 5, 2026, after swimming the English Channel — and is now hiking north toward his mother's front door in Hull, where he hopes to arrive on November 1, exactly 28 years after he departed.
Two rules, 29 countries, one epic trek
Bushby set out from Punta Arenas, Chile, on November 1, 1998, with two self-imposed rules: never use motorized transport to advance the route, and never return home to England until he could do it on foot. What he thought would take 10 to 12 years stretched into 28 — a journey through 29 countries across South America, the Darien Gap, North America, the frozen Bering Strait, Siberia, and Asia before reaching Europe.
The obstacles were the stuff of legend: guerrillas and cartels in the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, a 14-day crossing of the frozen Bering Strait with fellow adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, detention in Panama and Russia, visa bans, financial crises, a pandemic — and, in 2024, a 31-day swim across the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan because walking across was not possible. When Channel Tunnel operators refused his request to walk a service tunnel, he swam the English Channel instead — about 20 hours in the water over three days, with no specific swim training.
"British soil under my feet again"
Waiting on the beach at Dover on October 5 was his 79-year-old father Keith, a former SAS soldier whose birthday card idea started the whole expedition, along with his brother Adrian and a crew filming director Werner Herzog's documentary Walk of Life. "It feels good to have British soil under my feet again," Bushby said. His mother Angela, 76, whom he has not seen since 2015, is waiting in Hull — with a Christmas present saved for him every year he was gone.
What the finish line means
About 400 kilometers still separated him from Hull when he landed, and he has been walking north through England ever since, documenting the trek on TikTok. The distance walked is reported anywhere from nearly 50,000 kilometers to 58,000 kilometers depending on the source — the planned route total — but the scale is undisputed: one of the longest unbroken foot journeys in modern history. He plans lectures and projects afterward, then, he says, to "find some peace."
Takeaway: Bushby left at 29 and returns at 57, having spent half his life proving that an absurd, beautiful idea — walking home from the ends of the Earth — was possible after all.
Watch: Karl Bushby arrives home in the UK after his 28-year walk around the world
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Long Road Ahead B (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0