In 1998, Karl Bushby left Chile to walk home, and 28 years later, a Channel tunnel refusal stalled him; French approval may now let him swim home

In November 1998, a 29-year-old ex-British soldier Karl Bushby walked off a bus in Punta Arenas, Chile, and set out on foot on a journey that would ultimately last 28 years, crossing not just one, but four continents: South America, North America, Asia, and Europe, including a stretch of frozen sea and one particularly challenging jungle stretch of the Darién Gap, to reach his mother’s house in Hull, England.

Armed with a few hundred dollars, no sponsors, and a vow to not use any transportation other than his own two feet until he arrived at his destination, Bushby anticipated the journey would take him 12 years. He set off in November 1998, before smartphones, GPS tracking, or affordable internet access were part of everyday travel. Twenty-eight years later, Bushby reached within 21 miles of his destination, with no war zone, hostile immigration officials, or the Bering Strait preventing him from completing his goal. These challenges, however, were not the root cause of his last setback.

The distance between Bushby’s expectations and reality is instructive. A widely-cited 2007 study titled “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, has been used by researchers to explain why some people complete tremendously difficult, multi-year pursuits while others abandon them well short of the finish line. Karl Bushby, a walking field experiment for that hypothesis, may very well have some thoughts on the matter.


A 36,000-mile trek, delayed by a permissions slip

Karl Bushby did not have to deal with Russian immigration when he was forced to detour around the conflict zones in Iran in 2006, nor was he stopped cold in his tracks by the multiple other war zones he had to avoid on his journey. In June 2026, after walking his way across the Americas, swimming the Caspian Sea, and traversing Central Asia, Bushby’s request to walk the 4.8-meter service tunnel under the Channel was refused.

Eurotunnel, according to a June 2026 Explorersweb report, cited safety and operational concerns after months of Bushby’s attempts to get a yes. France, for its part, added in another complication: a French maritime rule dating to 1993 has historically permitted Channel swims to run from Britain to France, not the reverse, and for a time it seemed Bushby could not even begin his crossing from Calais.

Why was the open water crossing an easier alternative?

After all, as of early September 2026, the French authorities appeared to have relented, and Bushby told the Yorkshire Post that he anticipated finishing the journey within two months. That would leave him with the 28-year voyage across six continents finishing in a sprint of sorts: a 21-mile open-water swim in water temperatures of 17-19°C. According to a 2018 study titled “Acute Anxiety Predicts Components of the Cold Shock Response on Cold Water Immersion: Toward an Integrated Psychophysiological Model of Acute Cold Water Survival,” published in Frontiers in Psychology by Barwood et al., sudden immersion in cold water causes a physiological response known as the cold shock response, which manifests in gasping, hyperventilation, and a spike in heart rate, all of which can lead to fatal drowning, even in expert swimmers. Bushby is, first of all, not exactly an expert swimmer; aside from the Caspian crossing mentioned earlier, he has had to rely on his ability to swim to get across other large bodies of water on his trek.

Channel-swimming success rates vary considerably by era and by governing body: the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation has reported one-way solo success rates in the 60–80% range in recent years, a marked improvement on historical figures from the early-to-mid 20th century. Either way, both attempts and fatalities have accumulated over the swim's history, per long-running Channel-swimming records.

The real story isn't the swim

The true challenge behind the journey, as well as the final trek to his mother’s home in England, is best described as a bureaucratic one. Bushby, who has dealt with not one but multiple political regimes on his trip- negotiating Panamanian prisons, Siberian border guards, and a literal frozen ocean- had to deal with another hurdle, but this time, it was not a government but a company, specifically the Eurotunnel, that refused to let him walk the 4.8-meter service tunnel. For an individual used to dealing with the unpredictability of the natural world and navigating war-torn regions on his trek, an obstacle of a corporate risk assessment of sorts may very well be an unusual challenge.