After swimming the English Channel, Karl is now heading for his mum’s house where the epic adventure began
Karl Bushby after completing his swim of the English Channel(Image: karlcbushby/TikTok)
The epic travels of Hull man Karl Bushby are nearing their end. The adventurer, who set out from his mum’s home at Sutton Park in October 1998 to take on a unique global journey on foot, shared the news that he was back in England on Monday (October 5).
Karl, who had successfully battled authorities to overcome one of his last hurdles – swimming the English Channel – posted a video on TikTok saying he had “made it to the UK”. Still in his wetsuit, Karl said: “You are looking at Karl Busby, on the beaches of the United Kingdom. We just swam the English Channel and I am now back in the United Kingdom.
“Twenty hours in the water, in the last three days, and that’s got me to these beaches in the UK. But it’s not over yet.
“I gotta get to my mother’s house in Hull. I walked away from that place 28 years ago and that’s where we’re gonna wrap it up.
“That’s about 400 kilometres from here so I gotta get busy, I gotta get back on the road. We gotta get moving now.
“Karl’s home – 28 years later – but he’s home. It’s a special day. Thanks to everybody in the world that’s made this possible, what else can I say, man? We made it.”
The TikTok post showed clips of Karl’s gruelling swim, in daylight and in darkness. After leaving Newtondale, Sutton Park, the now 57-year-old headed for South America and it was from here, from its southern tip, that he began his solo footslog back to the UK, unassisted by any form of mechanical transport.
The former paratrooper and son of an SAS soldier set out to become the first person to walk an unbroken path around the world after a bet in a pub. He estimated it would take him 12 years.
He set out with a self-styled trolley to pull and push, which he named the Beast, and an idea that he would “walk home” from the southernmost tip of South America to Hull. He previously said: “People want to know, apparently, why I’m going back to Hull, as if, you know, it’s a place you would never go to for some reason. But A, it’s my home town; B, it’s where I left from.
“We’ve got to take it back to Hull. We’ve got to take it back and walk back down that street to where it all began.”
Karl has not given a date for when he expects to be striding back into Newtondale but an estimate for a long-distance hiker covering 400k, and taking rest stops and food breaks, and sleeping, is 12 to 15 days.
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