In 1998, Karl Bushby made a barroom bet that he could walk from the southern tip of Chile all the way home to England.
He thought it would take 8 years.
He started with $500 in his pocket and a simple rule: he would only travel by walking or swimming. No cars. No boats. No planes. He cannot go home until he arrives entirely on foot.
27 years later, he’s still going.
Here’s what he’s done along the way:
He survived the Darién Gap — the lawless jungle between Colombia and Panama, full of drug cartels and deadly wildlife. He crossed the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia on foot — the first human in modern history to do so. He swam across the Caspian Sea — the largest lake on Earth — in 31 days, the first human ever. He’s been arrested. Imprisoned. Gone hungry. Lost friends. Fought visa battles in dozens of countries.
“We’ve been through financial crises, wars, pandemics,” he said. “They all seriously interfere with the expedition. You just roll with it.”
He is currently in Europe. Hull, England — his home city — is less than 2,000 miles away.
But now, after 27 years, he’s hit a wall nobody saw coming.
The English Channel. By his own rules, he can’t sail across it. The obvious solution: walk through the Channel Tunnel. But that’s strictly forbidden — and despite multiple requests from his team, Eurotunnel officials have simply not responded. “It would be pretty miserable if it was a no,” Bushby told the BBC. “Even the Russians let me through.”
The man who crossed the Bering Strait. Who swam the Caspian Sea for 31 days. Who walked through war zones and jungles and frozen tundra for nearly three decades.
Potentially stopped by a tunnel that won’t return his emails.
He says he has “mixed feelings” about finishing. After 27 years on the road, home has become a strange concept. “I couldn’t even begin to express what it’s been, the world I’ve seen and the people in it.”
He expects to arrive in Hull by September 2026 — if the Channel cooperates. 
