Hero's welcome in Hull as Karl Bushby completes 28-year walk around the world

Karl Bushby was given a hero's welcome in Hull on Monday as he completed the penultimate leg of an extraordinary 28-year journey on foot that has taken him 36,000 miles through 29 countries.

Crowds of well-wishers packed Queen Victoria Square to greet the 57-year-old former paratrooper, who promptly admitted he had lost his bearings in his own city. "I've no idea which direction I'm going. Everybody point the way," he joked, adding: "Sorry to keep you all waiting, it's been a while."

Bushby crossed a misty Humber Bridge back into the city on Sunday, on the same date he had set off in 1998, aged 29, after leaving the army for what he had intended to be a 12-year walk around the world.

Throughout the odyssey he held to two simple rules: he would not return home until the feat was fully complete, and he would never use transport to advance. His route carried him across four continents, a frozen sea, deserts, jungles and mountains, despite his own professed dislike of walking. "It's boring as hell," he told the Guardian last month.

The journey, which began in Punta Arenas in Chile, the southernmost city in South America, included crossings of the frozen Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and the notorious Darién 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.

His arrival makes him the first person to have walked continuously across the world, far exceeding the existing record for the longest unbroken foot journey. He pushed a heavily loaded trolley known as the Beast 2, his first having broken down, carrying medicine, sleeping bags and headtorches on two badly worn tyres. "It took a world to get me here," he told the crowd from a makeshift stage. "I didn't do this alone. There was a big team, the biggest team: Earth."

The German film-maker Werner Herzog appeared on stage alongside him, overseeing what is expected to be one of the closing scenes of his documentary on the voyage. Karl Turner, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, read a message from the prime minister, Andy Burnham, who congratulated Bushby on his "truly remarkable" achievement and thanked him for his service as a paratrooper. "You bring a story of what can be accomplished through extraordinary determination and self-belief," Burnham said.

Later on Monday, Bushby was due to finish his journey at his childhood home, where his mother, Angela, said she would be waiting for him at the garden gate. Before being ushered away for a celebratory lunch, he offered a parting message to the city he left in 1998: "I guess I'll be seeing you around."