After 28 Years Walking the Globe, Karl Bushby Is Almost Home

Karl Bushby’s plan to walk across the globe began with a note in a birthday card.

It was the mid-1990s and Mr. Bushby was a paratrooper in the British Army, obsessed with endurance tests. He was trying to find the longest distance he could travel by foot, but none of his options felt challenging enough, maxing out at a few thousand miles. Then his father suggested in the card that he look into traversing the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia when it froze in the winter — unlocking a path across four continents.

Never mind that crossing the perilous waterway on foot had little modern precedent. Mr. Bushby took a black marker, walked to a map on his wall and drew a line from England, where he lived, through Europe and Asia, across the strait into North America and down to the southernmost tip of South America.

“That was when I realized that that’s the kind of thing I’ve been looking for,” he recalled in an interview. “Now we had the ultimate journey.”

Mr. Bushby flew to South America and started walking home. Nearly 28 years later, he’s almost done.

Earlier this month, he swam across the English Channel, arriving in his home country after spending half his life away. His trek began in southern Patagonia, Chile, in November 1998, when he was 29, and he plans to reach his mother’s house in Hull, England, sometime next week. He will be 57.