I’m the ex-wife of Karl Bushby – the ‘hero’ who walked around the world. I might not have

When Karl Bushby finally strolled into Hull this week, 28 years after starting his 31,000-mile walk around the world, he was very much given a hero’s welcome home.

There were marching bands and parades of military personnel as hundreds lined the bunting-filled streets to watch the adventurer make the final steps of his mammoth journey.

It was a journey that had taken him through some terrifying terrains – navigating polar bears, kidnappers and Russian secret agents en route.

Soon enough, calls were made for this modern-day explorer – who, aged 57, returned home to live with his mother with only £50 to his name and no mobile phone – to be granted a knighthood. 

The Prime Minister wasted no time in chipping in, praising what he called an ‘achievement of truly remarkable proportions’.

Yet as Karl fell into his weeping mother’s arms to rapturous cheers, to some, the fanfare started to sound a little off-key.

For surely there was another character in this dramatic narrative, whose own stories were equally heroic in their own way – yet getting no round of applause or promise of a gong.

Step forward the ex-wife whom Bushby left on her own, with barely a backwards glance and certainly not a penny in financial support, to raise their son, Adam, who was just eight years old when his father set off.

Angela Tivnen may not have traversed the drug-cartel infested jungles of Colombia, but she did manage to produce a decent, happy and well-adjusted young man – a devoted father now himself – who bears no ill-will towards his absent father.

Remarkable indeed. In fact, many this week have pointed out the glaring double standards in Karl Bushby’s compelling story. If Angela had abandoned her child at such a young age to head off on an indulgent globe-trotting adventure, she would have been labelled a bad mother at best, a monster at worst.

Yet giving her first interview regarding her ex-husband’s achievements, Angela is heroically stoic.

‘I had to learn to do everything myself. I did not need to rely on a man to bring up my son. I did it myself. Me and Adam got on with it and we were absolutely fine,’ she says, talking exclusively to the Daily Mail.

‘It’s just life. Things happen, and I can’t blame Karl for wanting to follow his dreams and do what he wants to do,’ she adds.

‘I know Adam got caught in the crossfire, and there was obvious hurt, but we worked through it. I have no animosity towards Karl and what he has done is an absolute achievement.

‘I know we are the family that were left behind but we got on with that… we had our lives and we were happy.’

Adam agrees. Life was ‘challenging at some points’ he has said, ‘but you just have to get up and get on with it’.

His mother, he added, ‘deserved a medal for sure’. It is to Angela’s credit that Adam, now aged 36 and with a partner and 12-year-old daughter, and a job in retail, continued to hold his father in such high-esteem all these years, despite only meeting him a handful of times, when he flew out with his grandmother to join him.

Tempting as it must have been to vent her frustration, Angela always managed to hold her tongue.

That is despite, as Adam has pointed out himself, Karl absenting himself from his son’s entire childhood: ‘First day at school, college, passing my driving test… birthday parties, Christmas, New Year’s.’ Everything.

Even Karl admitted he had been living a ‘purely selfish’ life since he left the UK in 1998, later adding: ‘Be careful what it is you celebrate and who your heroes are. If you look at the lives of people like [the explorers Sir Ernest] Shackleton and [Captain James] Cook and the others, they were horrible husbands and fathers.’

Angela concedes that she and Adam ‘could have done with more support’ over the years.

She recalls the tough conversation she had to have with little Adam when she tried to explain to him why his father was going away and wouldn’t be back for 12 years – the original timeframe for the trip.

At the time, Adam was eight. Knowing his father wouldn’t be back until he was a grown man, must have been distressing.

‘Yes, It was very hard for him and he really didn’t understand. He was very young. He was hurt, I was hurt,’ she says.

‘It was difficult for him not to have his dad in his life because he did worship him. He always has and he still does.’

Indeed, Adam was there, on the Humber Bridge, with other family members to greet his father this week – and introduce him to his granddaughter.

Notably, however, Angela did not make the trip.

Angela’s relationship with Karl had started conventionally enough – albeit when they were both very young. They’d met when Karl was a paratrooper in the British Army. She was just 18 and Karl a year older.

He’d been posted to Northern Ireland during The Troubles and was based at the Palace Barracks in Holywood, County Down, where Angela worked in one of the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) shops.

They dated, fell in love, and by 1990 had welcomed Adam into the world. The following year, when Adam was ten months old, they wed at Holywood town castle before relocating to the Army base at Aldershot, Hampshire.

Yet the marriage soon started to show signs of strain. Karl was posted back to Northern Ireland leaving Angela alone in a new country, with a small baby and no friends, family or support system.

‘We married so young and had Adam so young. Army life and being an army wife is really hard.’

By 1995, the marriage was over. Karl remained in England, while Angela and Adam returned to Belfast – then still in the depths of the Troubles – so she could be closer to her family, while Karl saw his son when he could.

Angela says she’d always known of Karl’s adventurous spirit: ‘When he sets his sights on something, he always goes for it.’

Still, news of his round-the-world trip, to walk an unbroken path across the world from Chile to Hull, was a surprise.

The trip came about as a result of a bet in a pub. Karl wagered he could walk the unbroken path around the world – without using any motorised transport – a journey of more than 30,000 miles.

It would take him through South America, Central America, North America, across the frozen Bering Strait into Russia, through Asia and Europe, then back home.

Suddenly, a plan was formed – and presented to Angela and Adam. ‘I was shocked. But we’ve only got one life,’ Angela says.

In the end, the 12-year trip ended up taking more than twice the original estimate.

‘As the years went on we just accepted that he had these hurdles to overcome and things he had to do before he came back,’ says Angela. Some of the delays were caused by multiple setbacks. In reality, only 15 years of his trip around the world were spent walking.

The 2008 financial crash delayed Karl when sponsorship money dried up, leading him to remain in Mexico for two years. There were also Russian visa issues and the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw Karl once again heading back to Mexico, using a plane – allowed because he wasn’t heading home – to return to his new base.

Among these obstacles, there were also relationships along the way – one of seven years with a woman named Catalina in Colombia and another lasting three years with a Japanese woman, Rika, with whom he spent time in Mongolia.

These love stories, as well as heartbreaks, undoubtedly added time to his mission.

Despite these setbacks, Karl refused to break his vow of only returning to England on foot. Even if a family member was dying, Karl would not come back.

‘They understood that if they died I wouldn’t be there,’ he previously told the Daily Mail.

Indeed, even when motorbike-mad Adam had a terrifying accident many years ago – from which he mercifully escaped with a few bruises – there was never any discussion of Karl returning.

It is for this reason that many in the extreme sports community are feeling more than a little queasy about the heroic welcome – and indeed the time it took for him to complete his mission.

Adventurer Johnny Ward, who is the only person in the world to complete the so-called Ultimate Explorer’s Grand Slam (every country, seven summits and both Poles), has questioned why Karl is being held up as ‘some modern Shackleton’ when in reality he ‘selfishly’ abandoned his son.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Johnny said: ‘I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but I just feel as though this has been misrepresented. Crossing the Bering Strait [walking across frozen sea ice and swimming through gaps of open water between Alaska and Russia] is epic.

‘The Darien Gap [the dense, roadless territory of rainforests and mountains separating Central America and South America], again, that’s cool…

‘The main thing is the narrative of the 28 years, that’s the biggest nonsense of all.

‘He had a Colombian girlfriend for seven years and a Japanese girlfriend for three years. He had an entire life, ten years, elsewhere.

‘It was not a continuous journey home and then doing these walks at a slow pace, as well as flying back to a life you have elsewhere, whether it’s Colombia or Mexico, but not flying back to see your family?’

In his defence, Karl would stay in touch with Adam when he could, phoning occasionally and sending postcards. As technology developed, and Adam got older, communication became easier.

Their relationship developed further too. In 2004, Adam visited his father in Alaska with his grandmother, Karl’s 78-year-old mother, also called Angela.

He then joined up with his father on his ‘Goliath Expedition’ again in 2014 as he journeyed across the United States, even featuring in a National Geographic documentary called The Walk Around The World, which followed Karl’s journey from Los Angeles to Washington DC.

It was the adventure of a lifetime for Adam, who, like his father, is full of wanderlust and came back with dozens of stories to tell his mother.

‘Adam is so upbeat. He sees everything as an adventure, too. He’s so much like his dad. He just loved it, and he loved being with his dad,’ Angela adds.

Yet Adam, despite the adventurous spirit and lust for travel, couldn’t countenance leaving his partner and daughter, Harley, says Angela.

‘His life revolves around them,’ she says.

A 28-year long adventure – or absence – for him, simply would never be worth it.