Karl Bushby walks home to Hull after 28 years circling the globe on foot
The former paratrooper left the southern tip of Chile in 1998, aged 28, vowing not to come home until he had made the whole journey without motorised transport. On Monday hundreds of people welcomed him back to Hull after some 50,000km. The catch: not all of it was on foot. He crossed the Bering Strait over frozen sea and says he swam the English Channel.
“Welcome home Karl,” read the banner. At around 11am on Monday, Karl Bushby walked into Queen Victoria Square in the centre of Hull, pushing the cart he has hauled across half the planet. Hundreds of people were waiting outside City Hall. “There has never been a welcome home quite like this,” he said.
Bushby, a former paratrooper, is now 57. He was 28 when he set off in 1998 from the southern tip of Chile with one promise: to get home without any motorised transport. The journey covered about 50,000km. Not all of it was walking on land: he crossed the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia over the frozen sea and, by his own account, swam the English Channel.
10,229 days of waiting
He was welcomed by the Lord Mayor, Maria Coward, and Hull East MP Karl Turner, who read out a message of congratulations from the prime minister. “For 28 years – 10,229 days – Hull has been waiting for your return,” the Lord Mayor told him.
Along the way he crossed the Darién Gap, the roadless jungle between Colombia and Panama, before going on through Asia and Europe. On Sunday he walked over the Humber Bridge with his father and brother.
Last stop: his mother’s house
Bushby does not take the credit alone. “I didn’t do this alone. It was a big team. The biggest team – Earth,” he told the crowd.
After a civic reception, he had about 5km left: from the city centre to his mother Angela’s house in north Hull, which he last saw in 1998.
Photos of his arrival can be seen on LADbible.
