KARL BUSHBY – Walking around the world since 1998 – Runner’s World, Dec 2025 issue
As a young paratrooper stationed in Dover, Karl Bushby often used to stand on top of the famous white cliffs and gaze at the coast of France across the water. ‘I spent a lot of time imagining this figure on the other side, looking back, and what he would have been through to get to that point,’ he says. ‘It’s kind of like a loop of time that has to be completed. I have to get to those cliffs in France to look back at that paratrooper, who’s about to do something truly insane.’
If the 56-year-old had known then how long it would take him to walk an unbroken route around the world, from the foot of Chile up through the Americas, across the Bering Strait into Russia and eventually, back up the garden path to his mother’s front door in Hull, I wonder if he would have taken those first steps so willingly. That Chile start point was in November 1998, when he was 29. When we speak, he’s just arrived in Istanbul, ready to begin the final push through mainland Europe, with a plan to be finally back in Hull sometime in mid-2026. That he’s still going with his mission is a testament to his powers of endurance, and let’s be honest – superhuman bloody-mindedness.
‘We’re down to the nitty-gritty now,’ he says. ‘There shouldn’t be any more political problems.’ He is still going to be hampered by Schengen visa regulations, which limit his travelling time within most European countries to 90 days and unable to return for another 90, but in the grander scheme, this is a minor issue. Good old Russia was the main cause of those political problems, starting when he was arrested for entering in the wrong place as soon as he arrived from Alaska in 2006. He then had the amount of time he could spend there severely limited by visa restrictions, and in March 2013 was banned from the country for five years. Extraordinarily, he decided to protest this decision by walking around 3,000 miles in the wrong direction, from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington DC. He was finally allowed back and crossed into Mongolia over a decade after first setting foot on Russian soil.
Add to all this the financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020, plus a decision to swim backstroke across the 179 miles of the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan instead of going around through Iran or Russia, and you start to see why this undertaking is taking so long. Karl began his journey with just two rules which he still refuses to break: ‘I can’t use any form of transport to advance, and I can’t go back to the UK until I arrive on foot,’ he explains. ‘Two simple rules – but once those rules meet reality, it can get awfully complicated.’
His unbending nature is mind-boggling, but those closest to him must find it infuriating. When not walking he has been based mostly in the Mexican coastal town of Melaque, as it is cheap and relatively handy for the LA-based documentary producers who have been the main source of his funding since 2010. His self-imposed refusal to pay a visit to the UK means he only saw his son from his former marriage in person, who was around eight when he left, when the boy joined him on some of the American walk. He has been visited by his mother four times and his father twice over the years, and now has a granddaughter he has never met.
Does it not feel like cutting his nose off to spite his face, when he allows himself to retreat to other countries between walking stints, to stay away from England? ‘Kind of, but that’s just what it is. That’s the rules,’ he insists. ‘It’s all been about not breaking those two rules. The fact that I can’t compromise on the route is really what makes this walk what it is.’
As for the walk itself, while it’s unclear whether he had a romantic view of the undertaking in the beginning, he certainly doesn’t now. This is not Dick Whittington with his knapsack on his back, or Laurie Lee wistfully recalling his walk from Gloucestershire to Spain in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. ‘It’s not about seeing the world. It’s about getting 200 pounds of gear from point A to point B, and it’s gruelling and mundane, and mostly just highways,’ he explains. ‘I like to use big roads with a good shoulder and a gap for me. Yes, over the whole thing you are going to see some amazing things and places, but for the most part, it’s just you and traffic. It’s dull.’
A journey that he originally believed would take about 12 years has ended up being almost a lifetime’s work. Karl has mixed feelings about what will happen when it is over. ‘I am having a panicky feeling about it coming to an end,’ he admits. ‘I find it hard to believe I’ll stay in the UK long term. I don’t feel a connection any more.’
But while Britain could well feel like another foreign country to him, he has arrived at this point feeling that people all over the world have more in common than they don’t. ‘Culture becomes a paper-thin thing. Everyone you meet has the same problems. The same things make them laugh or cry. You stop seeing everyone as different.’
