Karl Bushby: 'I may have to start paddling' says 27-year round the world walker barred from Channel Tunnel
Round the world walker Karl Bushby has been refused permission to walk under the Channel on his final leg home.
Bushby, now 57, set out on his walk in 1998, with a single aim - to travel from the southern tip of South America all the way home to Hull without using transport.
The ex paratrooper requested access to a service tunnel to cross the Channel, however this has been refused by Eurotunnel, due to safety and operational reasons.
Bushby told the BBC he “may have to start paddling”– a not impossible ask given his many feats of derring-do, notably in 2024, when he swam 186 miles (300km) across the Caspian Sea.
Eurotunnel said closing the service tunnel for a period of 15 hours, or over two days “would pose a safety risk to passenger services and impact essential maintenance work”. Congratulating him on his “incredible” journey, they added: "Access is also tightly controlled and any activity within it requires detailed planning and specialist support."
Busby’s epic 36,000-mile (58,000 km) journey has been massively prolonged by a combination of geographic hurdles, international politics, visa restrictions, and global events, like the Ukraine War.
Crossing from South to Central America took him through the Darien Gap—a dense, roadless jungle controlled by armed cartels and smugglers.
He became one of the first people to walk across the frozen Bering Strait, dodging polar bears and navigating shifting ice, which took months of waiting for the right weather conditions
After Russia invaded Ukraine he found himself trapped. Unable to enter the country again - or Iran - he instead had to swim 186 miles across the Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake.
He was accompanied by members of the Azerbaijani coastguard and two swimmers from the national team for the 31 day swim.