World3 min(s) read
British man who walked around the world for 28 years finally returns to the UK and answers the question everyone asked
After circumnavigating the world on foot for almost three decades, the British man who became the first person to do so has arrived back on home soil.
On Monday, October 5, Karl Bushby staggered onto Shakespeare Beach, on the south coast of England, after swimming the Channel as the final stretch of his mega journey.
The journey took more than double the time it was supposed to
Over the last 28 years, the 57-year-old has walked over 50,000 kilometres and only swam the last leg of his journey after officials from the Channel Tunnel connecting Folkestone, UK, and Calais, France, refused to grant him access to a service tunnel to walk through.
After finally arriving on British soil, Bushby told ITV: "[It] feels good to have UK soil under my feet after all these years.
"It hasn’t been easy, and that’s part of the point - proving I’m more capable than I give myself credit for. All of us can accomplish more than we will ever imagine.”
Bushby came up with the idea to walk across the world when he was serving in the British Army as a paratrooper. When he set off in November 1998, he only expected the journey to take 12 years.
Bushby used no motorized transport in almost 30 years
However, his strict self-imposed rules meant that he could not use any form of transport and could not return to the UK under any circumstances until he had completed the challenge.
Although the former soldier spent extra time living in Mexico and the US, he made sure to return to the exact same spot he stopped walking to resume his journey.
The gaps in walking came in between Bushby traversing the length of South America, crossing the Darien Gap, a stretch of dense and dangerous rainforest, before continuing the 7,000km north to Alaska.
Setting off from close to the northernmost point of America, he then became the first person to cross the narrow ocean channel, the Bering Strait, on foot, swimming when necessary.
Then the adventurer trekked across Siberia and the rest of Asia before swimming across the Caspian Sea, landing in the Middle East, where he began his long journey back to his native Europe.
While he has traveled more than 50,000 kilometres through 29 countries and set countless records along the way, the daredevil has still not completed his journey.
It is only when he reaches his mother’s house in Hull, around 480 kilometres from the beach where he landed, that Bushby will finally hang up his sneakers.