THE GOLIATH EXPEDITION: A 28-YEAR JOURNEY HOME

Karl Bushby expected to spend twelve years walking home. Nearly twenty-eight years later, he finally stepped onto a beach in England.

On November 1, 1998, the former British paratrooper left Punta Arenas, Chile, with two strict rules: no transport to advance along his route, and no returning home until he could arrive under his own power. He named his ambitious mission the Goliath Expedition.

His journey took him across some of the world’s most daunting terrains. He crossed the dense Darién Gap, travelled north to Alaska, and crossed the frozen Bering Strait into Russia in 2006. Over the decades, visa restrictions, border closures, and a global pandemic repeatedly forced him to halt. Years often passed between brief stretches of progress. In 2024, continuing his unwavering route, he swam across the Caspian Sea.

Even when he was within sight of England, another obstacle remained: his request to walk through the Channel Tunnel was refused. Undeterred, he prepared for another swim. On October 5, 2026, Bushby, now 57, reached Shakespeare Beach near Dover after roughly twenty hours of swimming over three days, sleeping aboard a support boat and resuming precisely from his last stopping point.

His father, brothers, and friends were waiting on the shore. After almost 50,000 kilometres, he was back in Britain. With around 250 miles remaining to his mother’s home near Hull, he began the final stretch towards the house he had left in 1998.