Karl Bushby has reached his mother’s front door in Hull, completing a 31,000-mile (50,000km) journey from Chile under rules that barred him from returning to Britain before the finish or using transport to advance.

The former paratrooper left Punta Arenas in November 1998, aged 29. Twenty-eight years later, Angela Bushby welcomed him to the Sutton Park home where she raised him, having not seen her son for a decade.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“It’s good to be home. It feels surreal,” Bushby said at the door. At a subsequent press conference, he confirmed: “I'm hanging my boots up.”

His route crossed four continents, taking him through the Darién Gap’s dense jungle and across the frozen Bering Strait in 2006. He swam 300km across the Caspian Sea between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in October 2024, and later swam the English Channel.

Yet the elapsed time was not all spent moving. Bushby said about 15 of the 28 years involved walking; visa difficulties, the 2007 global economic crash and Covid caused delays. Between stages, he often stayed in Mexico because living costs were low. His unbroken route did not mean an uninterrupted expedition.

The rules also shaped family life. He could meet relatives abroad, but could not return to Britain. On Sunday, crossing the Humber Bridge into East Yorkshire, he was welcomed by his 36-year-old son Adam, the 12-year-old granddaughter he had never met, his father and brothers.

Crowds subsequently gathered in Hull city centre, where lord mayor Maria Coward received him before he covered the final miles to his mother’s home. Thanking supporters, Bushby said: “The biggest team - Earth - got me back here.”

He had previously described lifelong “wanderlust”, with the opportunity to leave coming after his marriage ended and his wife returned to Northern Ireland with their son. Starting as a “penniless backpacker”, he relied on handouts and sometimes ate food discarded beside roads. Sponsorship and a book deal followed.

Bushby is now working with German filmmaker Werner Herzog on a documentary and writing a second book. But completing the journey brings a less straightforward adjustment: he expects difficulties in the coming days and weeks as the identity that defined half his life falls away.

“Everything that I am and everything that I know of me is going to go away,” he said. For now, he remains “still processing” being home. Asked what comes next, his answer was: “I have a story to tell.”