Wire reporting: (PA, via RTE News), (Reuters, via ABC News Australia)

HULL, England — Karl Bushby, a 57-year-old British former paratrooper, reached his mother's house in Hull on Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, ending a 28-year journey of about 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) that began in southern Chile^1,2,3.

Hundreds of people gathered in Hull city centre before he walked the last miles to Angela Bushby's home in Sutton Park, where a banner read "Welcome Home Son"^1,2. DW put the crowd at about 500³. RTE, using PA copy filed that morning, said he was due at Queen Victoria Square around 11 a.m., then at City Hall for a news conference⁵.

Bushby left Punta Arenas in November 1998, at 29, after his marriage ended, aiming for an unbroken route home without motorized transport to advance^1,2,4. CBS News identified the project as the Goliath Expedition, starting Nov. 1, 1998⁶.

Accounts of the route agree he traveled north through the Americas, including the Darien Gap, crossed ice on the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia in 2006 with French explorer Dimitri Kieffer, continued through Mongolia and China, swam the Caspian Sea, and last month swam the English Channel to Dover over several days^1,2,3.

He told a Hull crowd the welcome was unlike anything he had known and credited a global network of help². Al Jazeera quoted him saying it took a world, not a village, to get him there¹. At the door he said it felt surreal to be home².

On Sunday he crossed the Humber Bridge into East Yorkshire and met his son Adam, 36, a 12-year-old granddaughter he had not previously met, his father and brothers, the BBC reported². Euronews also described the reunion with Angela, Adam and the granddaughter at the finish⁴. Angela, who had not seen him for a decade, said it was good to have him home².

A trip first framed as about 10 to 12 years stretched to 28 because of visas, detention after entering Russia, a period in a Panama jail for entering without a visa, the late-2000s financial crash, COVID-19 and time based in Mexico^1,2,3. Bushby told the BBC only about 15 of the 28 years were spent walking². Distance figures vary slightly: BBC and Al Jazeera used about 31,000 miles or 50,000 kilometers; CBS used about 30,000 miles^1,2,6.

DW said Werner Herzog is making a feature documentary titled Walk of Life³. Al Jazeera and ABC News Australia, carrying Reuters, said a documentary is in production and Bushby plans a speaking tour in England^1,7. He has said readjusting to ordinary life will be hard^2,3.