British adventurer Karl Bushby, 57, returned to his hometown of Hull in northeastern England on Monday after a 28-year journey on foot, according to DW Europe. He had covered about 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles), beginning in the far south of South America in 1998.
Bushby told a crowd of about 500 people that he did not complete the trek alone. "I didn't do this alone. There was a big team, the biggest team, Earth. That's what it took to get me back," he said.
He followed two rules throughout the journey. He avoided all motorized transport, and he did not return home until he had finished what he set out to do.
The final leg took him to north Hull, where he was to reunite with his mother, Angela, his 36-year-old son, Adam, and a 12-year-old granddaughter he had never met.
Bushby began the trip in Chile at age 29, after his marriage broke up and his wife returned to Northern Ireland with their son. According to the report, he crossed the frozen Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia with French explorer Dimitri Kieffer in 2006, nearly losing his life. Returning to Britain earlier this year, he swam the English Channel from northern France to Dover over four days.
The report says Russia refused him a visa, which lengthened a trek originally planned to take 12 years to more than double that time. He also spent time in jail in Panama for entering the country without a visa. The COVID-19 pandemic caused further delays, and he lived for a time at a base in Mexico. He resumed the trek each time at the exact spot where he had stopped.
German filmmaker Werner Herzog is making a feature-length documentary about the journey, titled "Walk of Life."
In a September interview with the AFP news agency from northern France, Bushby said he felt apprehensive about returning to ordinary life in Britain. "I've got to try and get established in the grown-up world again," he said.