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Adventurer Karl Bushby has finally stepped foot on UK soil after a 28-year journey across the world.
On Oct. 5, he announced he swam the English Channel, from France to England. While resting in Dover, he said, “I’m staring at the Union Jack flying outside this hotel. I’ve seen many flags over the days, but that one is special.”
On social media he shared one of his first meals back, overjoyed to have authentic British fish and chips again.
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Karl Bushby celebrates after swimming across the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan in September 2024. (Resul Rehimov/Anadolu via Getty Images)
His journey is not over yet. He hopes to reach the finish line — his mother’s home in Hull — by the end of the month.
According to his website, he received a birthday card in the 1990s from his father about two soldiers arguing over an impossible feat, walking from London to New York via the Bering Strait. Karl grabbed a map and drew a single line, knowing he found his life’s mission.
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Bushby is shown moving through Dover, England, on Oct. 9 as he begins the final 250-mile leg of his 28-year journey.
On Nov. 1, 1998, the ex-paratrooper started his journey in Chile, with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket “South America, you were young, it was all new, it was the boys adventure dream,” Bushby said.
He walked north to the United States, waiting for the Bering Strait to freeze to cross from Alaska into Russia. In April 2012, Russia denied his next visa, pausing his expedition. So he started walking in the wrong direction, in protest, to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The ban was overturned and he carried on with his journey. From Russia he entered Mongolia, China, and swam the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan.
Then it was on to Europe.
“You’ll find that you are way more capable than you think you are, people always underestimate themselves. The world always looks bigger and scarier than it actually is,” Bushby said.
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Bushby walked through Cameron, North Carolina, in 2014 during the U.S. leg of his journey. (Megan Morr/Washington Post)
He originally expected the journey to take 12 years, but visa restrictions, the 2008 financial crash, COVID-19, geopolitics, detention and some close calls slowed his progress. He says it’s the people that kept him going.
“The world is an incredible place, and it’s the people, the strangers that I have met along the way, that have kept me upright and moving forward,” Bushby said.
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Bushby has roughly 240 miles left to walk. He covered more than 30,000 miles, across 29 countries. “We went at a reasonable pace, we did what we needed to do and it has worked. I know it’s time to stop, I know that much because I feel that in the knees and ankles.”