On 2 November 2026, 57-year-old Karl Bushby walked into Hull's Queen Victoria Square to cheering crowds, finishing a walk he started nearly three decades earlier. The former British paratrooper left Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile, on 1 November 1998, aged 29, with a rule for himself: he would travel as far as a human could in unbroken footsteps, using nothing but his own hands and feet. He expected it to take 12 years. It took 28 years and one day, and consumed roughly half his life.
The Goliath Expedition covered around 31,000 miles — think 14 Appalachian Trail thru-hikes, or 1.25 times around the planet — through 30 countries. Bushby hauled his gear on a handcart he called the Beast, which lasted three years before dying in Nicaragua; its replacement carried him the remaining 25. He was careful to describe himself as no superhuman, once telling Backpacker: "I'm an average guy... All I'm doing is putting one foot in front of the other."
The pace, just over three miles a day on average, wasn't from slowness but from obstacles. He crossed the ice of the Bering Strait from Alaska into Russia — and spent 58 days in Russian detention for the unauthorised crossing, after 18 days in Panamanian custody for walking the roadless Darién Gap out of Colombia. Visa troubles kept him in Russia for a decade; he got the paperwork he needed in 2014 only after walking 3,600 miles across the United States to knock on Russia's embassy door. When the 2008 financial crash killed his sponsorships, he regrouped in Mexico.
Two stretches required actual swimming, done in stages with overnight rests on a support boat: about 179 miles across the Caspian Sea in autumn 2024, partly to sidestep geopolitical complications, and 21 miles across the English Channel in October 2026, after Eurotunnel refused him passage through its service tunnels. The human cost went beyond blisters. Bushby left behind a son, now 36, whom he saw only a handful of times, and met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time on arrival. He went through two long-term relationships on the road. His cart, he told The Guardian, was "my Wilson" — the Castaway volleyball reference barely needs explaining for someone who spent 28 years walking alone.
Why should a holiday editor care? Because this is a reminder of what travel looks like at its most absolute: no flights, no shortcuts, no skipping the hard parts. There's no practical way for a reader to replicate the Goliath Expedition — but the story touches places that make great trip-building material, from Punta Arenas and the wild Darién Gap region to the Bering Strait, the Caspian coast and, fittingly, Hull, whose maritime history earned it the UK City of Culture title in 2017. For most of us, the takeaway is simpler: point yourself somewhere far, go on foot, and let the miles do the rest.
Story first reported by Backpacker.
