After 28 years and 50,000 km, a British adventurer is facing one last hurdle in his bid to trek home from South America without using any form of transport — the Channel.

“We thought we got permission to swim from the coast of France. Turned out that is not the case,” Karl Bushby, a former paratrooper, told AFP as he walked towards Cap Blanc-Nez in northern France, within sight of the white cliffs of the English coast.

“There was some internal confusion. So, right now we’re scrambling in kind of semi-panicked state.”

The 57-year-old had originally hoped to use a service corridor in the Channel Tunnel on foot, but he said the authorities seemed “set against” this idea.

So he resigned himself to swimming from Calais, even though he “hates” it.

“I say I swim like a cat dropped in a bathtub. It’s not funny. It’s bad.

“But you just do what you’ve got to do,” he said.

At an earlier stage of the journey he took 30 days to cross the Caspian Sea with a mixture of swimming and floating, resting — but not advancing — on a boat.

He hopes to get permission to swim across the Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, before October 1, after which the winter weather would make the crossing too risky.

When he set off in November 1998, Bushby set himself two rules: not to use any form of transport to advance, and not to return home — near Hull in northern England — except on foot.

As he travels he pushes a cart containing all his belongings, nicknamed “the Beast”.

Over three decades, he has paused his journey several times.

Moscow refused him a visa for a long time, unhappy that he had crossed the Bering Strait separating Alaska from far eastern Russia on foot — something he says no one had ever done before.

Between them, visa woes, the 2008 financial crisis, and then the Covid-19 pandemic have accounted for about 14 of his 28 years on the road, he estimates.

At those times, he stepped away from the journey, living notably in Mexico, then once the situation cleared, he would resume his journey at the exact spot where he had left off.

As he nears England, Bushby looks back nostalgically on the very start of the adventure, on his trek up through the Andes and the difficult crossing of the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama.

“Then slowly but surely it becomes a job. You get older, it gets harder,” he said.

Bushby is the subject of a documentary currently in preparation, and once the journey is complete he plans to devote himself to the film and to giving talks.

“I’ve got to try and get established in the grown up world again, because I’m going to arrive home with nothing,” he said.

But first there is the Channel to cross, and despite the challenge, Bushby is optimistic.

“I think we can work it out. If not, I’m living in France for the rest of my life!” he said.