No Darién Gap.
No Caspian Sea.
No tropical jungle.
But there is something fitting about that.
After travelling through some of the most extraordinary environments on Earth, the journey ends on ordinary roads in his own country.
The final kilometres may pass through landscapes that millions of Britons would barely notice.
A roadside.
A field.
A small town.
A familiar sign.
A stretch of pavement.
Then another.
And another.
Until eventually he reaches Hull.
And his mother's home.
The ending is almost perfectly simple.
A journey that began at the bottom of South America and crossed much of the planet will conclude at a front door.
Twenty-Eight Years for One Homecoming
When Karl Bushby left South America in 1998, he could not have known exactly what was ahead.
He could not have predicted the visa problems.
He could not have predicted the geopolitical crises.
He could not have predicted a global pandemic.
He could not have predicted that the Caspian Sea would become part of his route.
He certainly could not have predicted that, almost three decades later, he would be swimming toward Dover.
But he kept moving.
Sometimes quickly.
Sometimes painfully slowly.
Sometimes not at all.
Yet whenever the road opened again, he resumed from where he had stopped.
That may be the most remarkable feature of the Goliath Expedition.
Not that Bushby walked an enormous distance.
But that he kept returning to the journey after every interruption.
Twenty-eight years is long enough for an ordinary goal to become almost unrecognisable.
People grow older.
Parents age.
Countries change.
Borders move.
Governments change.
Technology transforms daily life.
And yet one thing remained constant.
The direction home.
The Finish Line Is Finally Visible
Bushby has now completed the most dramatic parts of his return.
He has crossed continents.
He has crossed frozen water.
He has crossed the Caspian Sea.
He has crossed the English Channel.
Britain is beneath his feet again.
But the expedition's official finish line is not Dover.
It is Hull.
And that makes the final stretch perhaps the most meaningful part of all.
For nearly 30 years, “home” was a destination thousands of kilometres away.
Now it is only a walk away.
The remaining distance may take days or weeks.
But after 28 years, that hardly matters.
The original 12-year plan has already been shattered by reality.
What matters now is completion.
One step.
Then another.
Then another.
Eventually, after tens of thousands of kilometres, the road will end where the journey was always supposed to end.
At home.
At his mother's door.
And when Karl Bushby finally arrives in Hull, the most extraordinary part of the story may not be that he walked around the world.
It may be that after nearly three decades of obstacles, uncertainty and seemingly impossible detours, he never stopped finding a way forward.
The world kept putting barriers in front of him.
He kept looking for another path.
And now, for the first time since 1998, there is almost nowhere left to go.
Only home.