HULL (The Thursday Times) — British adventurer Karl Bushby walked up to his mother’s front door in Hull on Monday, 28 years after he set off from the southern tip of Chile to walk home the long way round.
The 57-year-old covered about 50,000km without using motorised transport to advance his route, and was embraced by his mother, Angela, outside her terraced house under a banner reading “Welcome Home Son”. Hundreds of supporters had cheered him through the city centre.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he told the crowd. “Is that it, is it done?”
Bushby left Punta Arenas in November 1998 with a tent, a few hundred dollars and a cheap plastic camera, expecting what he called the Goliath Expedition to take 12 years.
It took more than twice that. He crossed the Darien Gap jungle between Colombia and Panama, walked over the frozen Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia, was detained after entering Russia, and went on through Mongolia and China. He swam the Caspian Sea, and last month swam the English Channel to clear the last major obstacle. Visa problems and the loss of major sponsors in the 2008 financial crisis added years.
“They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” he said. “The kindness of strangers, so many, from individuals to nation-states, to get me back here today. I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”
A feature-length documentary on the journey is in production, and Bushby plans a speaking tour of England in the coming weeks.
