The Long Way Home

This week: back on British soil after 28 years

He walked home the long way.
Can you?

On 5 October 2026 Karl Bushby swam ashore at Dover — 27 years and 11 months after setting off on foot from the bottom of Chile. Two rules: no engines on the route, and no going home until it’s done. Now walk it yourself.

Play the expedition → Follow the real route
~50,000 kmPunta Arenas → Hull
29countries
10,200days since he set off
~400 kmleft from Dover to Hull

Four ways in

Play: The Long Way Home

An expedition game across 18 chapters of the real route. Manage legs, food, money and visa clocks. Cut through the Darién Gap, hop floes across the Bering Strait, swim the Caspian and the Channel. Refuse every lift. Get a shareable expedition card. 3 modes · 60+ events · 4 mini-games

The Route: 28 years on one map

31 real milestones, from a Panamanian jail cell to a five-year Russian ban and a 288 km swim. Press play and watch the line crawl around the planet. Interactive timeline

Your Steps: how long would you take?

Enter your daily steps and see how many years the same 50,000 km would take you — and where a year of walking would leave you on the map. Calculator

The Unbroken Line Quiz

Ten random questions from a bank of 40. Do you know which filmmaker was waiting on the beach, or why he had to swim the Channel? 40 questions

The two rules

  1. No motorised transport on the route. Every metre of the line is walked — or, where there’s no other way, swum. Off-route trips (visa runs, flights to renew paperwork) are allowed, as long as you return to the exact spot you stopped.
  2. No going home until it’s finished. Home is his mother’s house near Hull. He left in 1998, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

Why it took 28 years, not 12

  • 18 days in a Panamanian jail
  • A stolen trailer in Montana
  • Detained after walking across the sea ice
  • The 2008 crash took his sponsors
  • A five-year Russian ban
  • A 4,800 km protest walk
  • Police escort in Xinjiang
  • Stuck at the Iran border
  • COVID-19
  • Schengen’s 90/180 rule
  • The tunnel said no

By one count, only about 13 of those years were spent actually walking.

“All of us can accomplish more than we will ever imagine.”

— Karl Bushby, after landing at Dover

Start walking