Man who’s spent 28 years walking from Chile to Hull stopped from swimming English Channel home

A former paratrooper who has spent nearly 30 years walking home to Hull from South America may be prevented for a second time after he was prevented from swimming across the English Channel.

Karl Bushby – who is travelling the world without using cars, trains, buses or planes – may not be able to make the final crossing to the UK from France, as French authorities only allow people to swim in the other direction.

Karl, 57, said: ‘We are talking with the French coastguard.’

Bushby set off from Chile in 1998 and has reached Belgium.
He is now nearing the final stages of his journey back to his hometown.

But crossing the Channel has proven a challenge more than once after Eurotunnel bosses refused his request to walk through it in June.

This left him with no option but to swim, in line with the terms of his challenge, which say he cannot use any form of transport to travel.

Bushby still hopes that authorities might let him use the Eurotunnel. In the meantime, he is hoping he can find a way to swim the 21-mile distance in just a few months.

We have secured a support boat for October’, he said. ‘That’s a big thing. I would expect it to take two or three days to swim across to the UK.’

Karl is currently in Mexico, where he takes breaks between stages of his challenge to meet visa regulations and to plan routes. On occasion, he visits the US, where his sponsors are based. 

‘I will be back in Belgium in early September,’ he said. ‘Towards the end of that month, I expect to be in France, preparing for the swim.

‘I am not angry it has come to this. I am more disappointed. But things could still change. Walking through the service tunnel is still the preferred option.’

Karl is no stranger to traversing vast bodies of water. 

In 2006, he became the first Brit to walk across the Bering Strait, a 58-mile stretch of frozen sea linking North America and Russia. 

Then, in 2024, he swam more than 170 miles over 31 days across the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan to avoid conflict zones in Russia and Iran.

Despite this, Karl isn’t a fan of this method of getting around.

‘I’m just not into the swim thing,’ he said previously. 

‘I’ve had to do a couple of swims here and there. […] [The English Channel] is a different stretch of water; it’s colder, we’ll see. Hopefully, I’ll never have to think about it.’

Where has Karl been so far?

Karl began the challenge after sketching a rough path on a map when he was in the army. He showed the plan to fellow soldiers who told him it could not be done.

This made him all the more determined, and he set himself two rules: to never use transport, and to not return to the UK until he had completed the journey.

Karl set off on his 36,000-mile journey from Punta Arenas, Chile, in 1998, thinking it would take him 12 years.

But in the three decades since, he has been met with several setbacks that have lengthened his adventure.

He has had to evade bandits in the notoriously dangerous Darien Gap and has been detained by Russian officials for illegally entering the country.

He also spent 18 days in prison in Panama for entering without a visa before continuing his journey through Mexico and the US, where he overstayed his visa and had to fly back to Colombia to wait for a new one.

In 2003, as he was preparing to cross the border into Canada, his trailer was stolen and he was forced to wait another month for the items in it to be replaced.

His trailer was stolen on New Year’s Day 2003, a day before he was due to cross into Canada while visiting a bar. Another month passed while he replaced his lost items.

Despite this – and many other issues he encountered along the way – he reached Armenia last June, before travelling through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and, after stopping off in Mexico to sort his Schengen visa out, traversed Europe where he is now hoping to find a way to cross his final sea.

Once he is back on UK shores, Karl will walk to Hull, where the journey will end at his childhood home.

The French Maritime Rescue Coordination center referenced a 2018 ‘prefectural order’ confirming the restriction on Karl’s swim.

It said it has referred Karl’s support team to the Channel and North Sea Maritime Prefecture.