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 in the arms of his longsuffering mother, Angela.
“Where have I been?” he joked as Angela sobbed into his chest with a mix of relief, pride and no doubt the odd sleepless night.
Surrounded by television cameras and with a Sky News helicopter overhead, the 57-year-old was given a hero’s welcome as he completed 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 on Monday.
“There has never been a welcome home quite like this, I’m sure,” said Bushby, shaking his head in disbelief as he greeted a crowd of well-wishers in the city’s 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.
Yet for a man who had navigated much of the planet, he did appear to get a little lost on his way through the crowds of his home city. “I’ve no idea which direction I’m going. Everybody point the way,” he said. “Sorry to keep you all waiting – it’s been a while.”
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.
About three miles away, Angela, 75, was waiting at the gate of Bushby’s childhood home as she had promised. After a tearful embrace, they took a long look at each other.
“You’ve changed a bit,” Bushby told her. “I’m older,” his mother replied through tears. “We both are,” he said. “Well done for hanging in there.”
He was then whisked inside the small terrace house, festooned with union flag bunting, where he was reunited with his son, now 36, and a 12-year-old granddaughter whom he was meeting for the first time.
Earlier 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.”
