The former British paratrooper, now 57, threw his arms around his tearful mom, Angela, on the pavement outside her modest row house in Hull, the same northern England home he strolled away from in 1998.
asserted
he → throw → 1998
A “Welcome Home Son” banner hung over the scene as reporters, gawkers and a documentary crew jammed the street.
asserted
reporters → welcome → street
“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby told the crowd.
asserted
Bushby → say → crowd
I didn’t do this alone.
asserted
I → do → this
Naturally, he finished on foot.
asserted
he → finish → foot
He hiked across the Humber Bridge into his hometown.
asserted
He → hike → hometown
Crossing the Humber Bridge into East Yorkshire on Sunday, he was greeted by his father, his brothers, his 36-year-old son Adam, and his 12-year-old granddaughter, whom he was meeting for the very first time, the BBC reported.
asserted
BBC → cross → time
On Monday, he pulled into Queen Victoria Square in central Hull around 11 a.m., where hundreds packed a civic ceremony to greet him.
asserted
hundreds → pull → him
“I’m back,” he said.
asserted
he → ’m → ?
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he cracked.
asserted
he → keep → you
“Is that it, is it done?”
asserted
it → do → ?
The whole saga traces back to a card from his dad.
asserted
saga → trace → dad
In the mid-1990s, Keith Bushby, himself an Army veteran, passed along a debate raging among his special forces pals over whether a man could hoof it from London to New York by way of the Bering land bridge, the ancient crossing some scientists believe early humans used to reach the Americas when seas ran lower.
uncertain
seas → pass → Americas
Bushby, who logged 12 years with the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, quit the Army in late 1997 fresh off an ugly divorce and spoiling for a challenge.
asserted
who → log → challenge
“I had something to prove to my paratrooper mates,” he told Backpacker magazine.
asserted
he → have → magazine
He set two unbreakable rules.
asserted
He → set → rules
No vehicle could ever carry him forward, and he couldn’t go home until his own feet got him there.
uncertain
feet → carry → him
At 29, he hopped a flight from a Royal Air Force base outside Oxford to the bottom of South America and started walking from Punta Arenas, Chile, on Nov. 1, 1998, reportedly carrying less than $1,000.
uncertain
he → hop → 1,000
He pegged the trip at roughly five years.
asserted
He → peg → years
“You just dump a whole bucket full of reality on that,” he said.
asserted
he → dump → that
“We suspected that it was 12 years plus.
asserted
it → suspect → ?
But never in our wildest dreams would we ever have imagined 28 years.”
asserted
we → imagine → years
Mother Nature threw everything she had at him.
asserted
she → throw → him
In 2001 he slipped past armed conflict in the Darién Gap, the brutal, road-free stretch of jungle and mountains linking the Americas, only to land behind bars in Panama for 18 days after wandering into a restricted border zone.
asserted
he → slip → zone
In 2006, he and American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer tackled the 56-mile frozen Bering Strait.
asserted
he → tackle → Strait
They had to be rescued by air, regrouped, then went toe-to-toe with a polar bear, nearly drowned in frigid water and almost watched their sleds and supplies vanish into the sea.
asserted
sleds → have → sea
Their reward for pulling it off was an arrest in Russia for illegal entry and the threat of deportation.
asserted
reward → pull → deportation
But paperwork, not peril, proved his toughest foe.
asserted
paperwork → prove → ?
Russia ate up nearly a decade as visa headaches piled up and the weather allowed only a few months of walking a year.
asserted
weather → eat → walking
When Moscow refused him a visa in 2012, he marched from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington in protest, which eventually got him the documents.
asserted
which → refuse → documents
The Kremlin later hit him with a five-year entry ban in 2013, forcing a detour through Mongolia and China, a weekslong swim across the Caspian Sea to Baku and, finally, a push into Europe last year.
asserted
Kremlin → hit → Europe
The Channel Tunnel’s operator nixed his request to walk its service passage, so the self-described weak swimmer, who once said he paddles “like a cat dropped in a bathtub,” dove in.
asserted
he → nix → bathtub
On Oct. 5 he staggered onto Shakespeare Beach, south of Dover, after about 20 hours of swimming spread over three days, with his father and brothers waiting on the sand.
asserted
father → stagger → sand
He’d quietly cleared the crossing with French and British officials and both coast guards beforehand.
asserted
He → clear → officials
“It feels good to have UK soil under my feet after all these years,” he told The Post.
asserted
he → feel → Post
“It hasn’t been easy, and that’s part of the point.”
asserted
that → ’ → point
“Lots of different hard parts, but let’s say the Darien Gap and Alaska,” he said.
asserted
he → let → Gap
“It’s kept me in shape,” he said.
asserted
he → keep → shape
“There are some aches and pains, but anyone who’s gonna be 57 and above, and is physically active, is probably gonna be the same.”
asserted
who → be → ?
Bushby told The Post has no regrets.
asserted
Post → tell → regrets
…and 19 more, not listed.
The Aporia
