After 28 Years and 31,000 Miles on Foot, Ex-Paratrooper Karl Bushby Walks Home to Hull
British former paratrooper Karl Bushby walked the final stretch of a 28-year journey on November 2, arriving at his mother Angela's home in Hull, northern England, and completing an unbroken trek around the world made entirely under his own power. Bushby, 57, set out from Punta Arenas, Chile, on November 1, 1998, and covered some 31,000 miles (50,000 km) across four continents and about 30 countries without ever using transport to move himself forward.
On Monday morning he pushed his handcart, nicknamed "the Beast," into Queen Victoria Square in central Hull, where hundreds of cheering supporters welcomed him. "After 28 years, you just couldn't ask for more than this," he told the crowd, according to Reuters. He then walked on to his mother's house, the home he had left in 1998, where his mother, his 36-year-old son Adam and his 12-year-old granddaughter, whom he was meeting for the first time, were waiting, the BBC reported.
Bushby was 29 when he set out, carrying a tent, a few hundred dollars and a cheap plastic camera. He imposed two rules on what he called the Goliath Expedition: no form of transport could carry him forward, and he could not come home until his own feet brought him there. He originally expected the walk to take about 12 years.
Heading north through the Americas, he crossed the Darien Gap and was jailed for 18 days in Panama after crossing a restricted border zone. In 2006 he crossed the Bering Strait on foot over shifting ice with American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer, at one point being airlifted off a drifting ice floe. Visa problems then stalled him in and out of Russia for nearly a decade. Shut out of his land routes by geopolitics, he later spent 31 days swimming across the Caspian Sea. This October he swam the English Channel, landing near Dover on October 5, and on November 1 he crossed the Humber Bridge into Hull, according to the BBC.
Bushby told the BBC he has actually spent only about 15 of the 28 years walking, returning to Mexico periodically to sort out visas, logistics and sponsorship. Along the way he faced a stand-off with a polar bear, detention by Russian authorities and long delays from the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID pandemic.
A feature-length documentary about the expedition, by filmmaker Werner Herzog, is in production, and Bushby plans a speaking tour around England in the coming weeks.
(Source: BBC, Reuters, Associated Press)
Source: BBC, Reuters, Associated Press
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：11月2日，卡尔·布什比（中）抵达位于Hull的母亲家，与母亲Angela团聚。摄影：Hullian111，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Karl Bushby (centre) arrives at his mother Angela's home in Hull on November 2. Photo by Hullian111, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
