A British adventurer is free to resume his attempt to walk around the world after a Russian court overturned a decision to deport him for illegally entering Russia via the ice bridge with Alaska.

Karl Bushby, an ex-Paratrooper who set out from southern Chile in 1998, was detained with a fellow adventurer, Dmitry Kieffer, on April 1 after they crossed the perilous Bering Strait on foot.

The pair both possessed Russian business visas, but did not have permits to enter Chukotka, a restricted border area, and did not have their passports stamped at an official border crossing.

A court in Chukotka ruled on April 14 that they should be fined 2,000 roubles (£40) each and deported, meaning they would be barred from re-entering Russia for five years.

But today, a higher court annulled the deportation order, allowing Mr Bushby to resume the 36,000-mile odyssey that he hopes to finish in his hometown of Hull in 2009.

Mr Bushby, 37, who is staying in an apartment in Anadyr, the capital of Chukotka, said he was determined to complete his trek through Russia, Mongolia, Kazkhstan and on to Europe.

"It’s great news - keeps it all together. At the end of the day, I think it was in their best interests,", he told The Times after a night of celebrations.

"We were confident because there was a lot of working behind the scenes. But it was still a real nail-biter right to the last."

He said he could not confirm rumours that John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, had asked Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who is governor of Chukotka, to intervene. But he said Mr Abramovich’s office had told him that the Chelsea Football Club owner had no influence on the court.

Mr Prescott’s office and the British Embassy said they knew nothing of the Deputy Prime Minister’s rumoured role.

"We are delighted that Russian authorities have shown such flexibility and allowed Karl to continue his quest," an Embassy spokesman said.

The verdict reflected Moscow’s growing concern about its public image in the West in the run-up to the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July. This week, the Kremlin revealed that it had hired an American PR firm, Ketchum, to help put across its message.

But the verdict also appealed to many inside Russia, where Mr Bushby has been feted as the quintessential eccentric British explorer. He had won public backing from Artur Chilingarov, President of the Russian Association of Arctic Explorers and a deputy speaker of the State Duma.

"One shouldn’t raise obstacles to these people," he said this week. "They have been walking for six years already - let them walk for another six."

The two adventurers are now waiting for their confiscated equipment to be flown into Anadyr, before catching a flight back to Alaska.

Mr Kieffer, an American endurance runner who joined him for the Bering Strait crossing, will return to his home in Anchorage. Mr Bushby, meanwhile, will stay in Alaska to buy new equipment and prepare the correct paperwork to continue his journey.

He will then fly back to Chukotka and start walking again from Uelen, the village where he was detained. But he said that would not happen until this winter as huge swathes of far eastern Russia are covered in swamps and rivers for the summer.

Back in Britain, his father, Keith, said he was delighted by the news.

"This latest decision does everyone some good," he said."It opens a chink of light in an otherwise dark corner of the world."

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