British adventurer finally gets OK from France to swim home across the Channel and finish his 36,000-mile round-the-world odyssey 28 years after he started
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.
In short
- Ex-paratrooper Karl Bushby gets French approval to swim the Channel home
- Completes a 28-year, 30,000-mile round-the-world walk from Chile
- Aims to reach Hull, his hometown, by 1 November
Explained simply
Karl Bushby is a former British paratrooper who set out from Chile in 1998 to walk around the world and return to Britain. He made a rule that he would not use transport, so the journey has involved crossing difficult terrain and finding a way through borders on foot.
The route has taken him across more than 30,000 miles, including the Bering Strait and the Darién Gap. The English Channel lies between France and Britain, and crossing it is a final obstacle to reaching his home city of Hull; the story also highlights the permissions and border rules that can shape a long-distance journey.
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