On November 2, Karl Bushby walked the last miles through Hull, in northern England, and put his arms around his mother at her front door. Angela Bushby was waiting in the house where she had raised him, a place he had not seen in ten years. "It's good to be home," he said. "It feels surreal. It's the end of a 28-year journey."
Bushby was 57 that morning. He had been 29 in November 1998, when he left Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, on the trek he later called the Goliath Expedition: an unbroken path home of about 50,000 kilometers across four continents. He set himself two rules. He would not take a vehicle to move forward, and he would not set foot in Britain until he had finished. Family visits, when they happened at all, had to take place in other countries. The house in Hull stayed off limits until the walk was done.
Those 28 years include long pauses. Bushby has said he was actually on the road for only about 15 of them. The trek was meant to be much shorter, but money ran out, and visas took years. Between stretches he sometimes waited in Mexico, where living was cheaper, until he could start again. When water blocked the land route, he swam rather than board a ship: 31 days across the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water, and later the English Channel, the last stretch of water before British soil. He also crossed the frozen Bering Strait and a dense jungle known as the Darien Gap.
On Sunday he came over the Humber Bridge into East Yorkshire in thick mist and saw his son, now 36, and a 12-year-old granddaughter he had never met, along with his father and brothers. "It was amazing," he said. On Monday, crowds filled Hull's city center. He thanked them and said the biggest team, Earth, had got him back. Then he walked on to Sutton Park, as he and his mother had agreed years before.
"Where have you been?" Angela asked. She told reporters she was relieved to have him home. Bushby said his head was still a blur and that he had not expected a welcome like this. "I'm hanging my boots up," he said. He had a story to tell, and a second book to write. After four continents, the last stop was still the same ordinary house.