Polar bears and frost nip were not enough to stop an intrepid East Surrey Hospital doctor in his tracks on a 160-mile expedition across the Arctic this month.

Dr Mark Wilson, 28, was the only doctor in a team of seven who retraced the steps of ill-fated 19th century explorer Sir John Franklin.

Back at work in the hospital just three days after completing the 19 day trek across the white wilderness of northern Canada, Dr Wilson said it had been an amazing experience: "We learned a lot about the original explorers who made the trip 150 years ago.

"You can't see the difference between the sky and land, you can't see the sun and you can't use a compass because you're in the magnetic north pole and it just spins round.

"There is very little you can kill or hunt to eat, so by the time we got to Starvation Cove, where the last five members of Sir Franklin's crew eventually died, it was hard to imagine how awful it must have been for them when they didn't have the sort of equipment we did."

Using the opportunity to conduct some medical experiments into how cold affects the body's breathing and urine systems, Dr Wilson said he was glad that he only had to treat team members for frost nip, chest infections and aches and pains.