Karl Bushby, a 57-year-old former British paratrooper, has been granted French permission to swim across the English Channel, allowing him to complete a 28-year journey home on foot that began in Chile in 1998. Under the self-imposed rules of his expedition, Bushby cannot use any transport, and French authorities had initially refused his request, both for the swim itself and for an alternative route through the Channel Tunnel's service tunnel, before eventually relenting.

Bushby, who has already covered more than 30,000 miles including the Bering Strait and the Darién Gap, expects to enter the water around 1 October and estimates the crossing will take three to four days, resting on a support boat between swims. He said arranging visas and permissions, rather than the physical journey, had proved the hardest part of the expedition, and he now hopes to reach his home city of Hull by 1 November, where his mother has promised to greet him.