Hero's welcome in Hull for Karl Bushby after 28-year walk around the world

Former paratrooper Karl Bushby has returned to his home town of Hull after a 28-year walk around the world, and was given a hero's welcome by crowds in the city's Queen Victoria Square.

Bushby, 57, walked through the crowd saying he had no idea which direction he was going and asking everyone to point the way. Apologising for keeping people waiting, he said it had been a while.

On Monday he completed the penultimate leg of the journey on foot from Punta Arenas in Chile, the southernmost city on the South American continent, back to Hull. He said there had never been a welcome home quite like it.

Bushby left the army in 1998, aged 29, to walk the world on what he intended to be a 12-year journey. In the end it took 28 years.

In that time he walked 36,000 miles across 29 countries, crossing four continents, a frozen sea, deserts, jungles and mountains.

The voyage took him across the frozen sea of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and across the notorious Darien Gap in Central America.

Along the way he was threatened at gunpoint, faced down a polar bear, was convicted of being a spy, and was held in custody in Russia and sentenced to deportation.

Throughout the journey Bushby stuck to two rules: not to return home until he had fully completed the feat, and not to use transport to advance.

He crossed a misty Humber Bridge back into the city on Sunday, on the same date he set off in 1998.

His return makes Bushby the first person to have walked continuously across the world, on the longest unbroken foot journey, far exceeding the 25,000-mile circumference of the planet.

Later on Monday he will complete the journey at his childhood home, where his mother, Angela, said she would be waiting for him at the garden gate.