‘It’s been a while’: hero’s welcome for UK man after 28-year walk across the world

Former paratrooper Karl Bushby arrives back in Hull and becomes first person to walk continuously across planet

After a 28-year odyssey spanning 29 countries, 36,000 miles, facing down polar bears, kidnappers and a spell in Russian custody, Karl Bushby was finally back home in Hull – and immediately got lost.

“I’ve no idea which direction I’m going. Everybody point the way,” he said as he walked through a crowd of wellwishers in the city’s Queen Victoria Square. He added: “Sorry to keep you all waiting – it’s been a while.”

Bushby, 57, was given a hero’s welcome as he completed the penultimate leg of his record-breaking voyage on foot from Punta Arenas in Chile, the southernmost city on the South American continent, to his home town of Hull.

Later on Monday, the former paratrooper will complete the journey at his childhood home, where he will be greeted by his mother, Angela, who said she would be waiting for him at the garden gate.

“There has never been a welcome home quite like this, I’m sure,” said Bushby, shaking his head in disbelief as he greeted the crowd in Queen Victoria Square. “This is absolutely madness.”

It has been 28 years since Bushby, then aged 29, left the army to walk the world on what he intended to be a 12-year journey. He finally crossed a misty Humber Bridge back to the city on Sunday – on the same date he set off in 1998.

In that time he has stuck by two simple rules: not to return home until he had fully completed his feat and not to use transport to advance.

In all, he walked 36,000 miles across four continents, a frozen sea, deserts, jungles and mountains. Quite a trek for a man not keen on walking. “It’s boring as hell,” he told the Guardian last month.

His return on Monday will make Bushby the first person to have walked continuously across the world, visiting 29 countries, having already exceeded the record for the longest unbroken foot journey (far outstripping the 25,000-mile circumference of the world).

The voyage took him across the frozen sea of the Bering strait between Alaska and Russia and across the notorious Darién Gap in Central America. He described last month how he had been threatened at gunpoint, faced down a polar bear, was convicted of being a spy, and been held in custody in Russia and sentenced to deportation.

Bushby strode into Queen Victoria Square like a modern folk hero, his passage only slowed by the dozens of people rushing to shake his hand and take photographs.

Through the crowd he pushed his heavily loaded trolley, dubbed the Beast 2 (his first one broke down) laden with essentials such as medicine, sleeping bags, headtorches – and two very worn tyres. “Sorry everybody, sorry,” he said as he manoeuvred through the well-wishers.

On a makeshift stage, Bushby thanked the city for his hero’s welcome. “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. I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team, the biggest team: Earth.

“We faced down governments, we faced down some of the hardest challenges, we had to create two world records just to get back here. It was a global effort.”

At one point, the great German film-maker Werner Herzog appeared on stage alongside Bushby, overseeing what will surely be one of the closing scenes in Herzog’s documentary on the 28-year odyssey.

Karl Turner, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, brought with him a message from the prime minister, Andy Burnham, who congratulated Bushby on his “truly remarkable” feat and thanked him for his service as a paratrooper.

In a statement read on stage by Turner, Burnham said: “Your journey has taken nearly three decades, crossed continents and tested you in ways most of us can barely imagine.

“But today, as you return to the city from which you left 28 years ago, you bring with you something far greater than any world record or a remarkable personal achievement. You bring a story of what can be accomplished through extraordinary determination and self-belief.”

As he was ushered away for a big lunch before the walk to his mother’s house, Bushby had one last message for the city he left in 1998: “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”