The First Person to Walk Around the World

I am hoping to fulfill one of my ambitions in January, when I visit my 100th country, but there is another one that realistically I don't think I'm ever going to achieve, and that is to walk around the world. Why am I not going to achieve it? Well, one reason is that I just don't think my feet are up to it. But, more important still, sometimes in my travels I have to consider other people, and as such a journey would take around four years and I know my wife wouldn't want to do it, I'll just have to pass on this one and take my hat off to someone who has acually done it, the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, who achieved this feat (puns are fun) between 1970 and 1974. He was accompanied by his brother, John Kunst, who was shot dead along the way and so never made it.

Some people just don't seem to get the fame they deserve. One of them is Tim Berners-Lee the inventor of the World Wide Web, and another is Dave Kunst. Dave walked 14,500 miles, took twenty million steps and wore out twenty-one pairs of shoes along the way. He even found time, when he was walking across Australia, to meet the woman whom he was later to marry.

You can see Dave telling how he did it here:

Earthwalker.