Polar controversy!

WideWorld's list causes rucus

WideWorld's 'Great Polar Expeditions' feature seems to have caused a bit of a stir.

Earlier this week we published a piece listing some of great polar journeys. "The history of man and woman's exploration of the North and South Pole is intensely inspiring," we said. "From the 19th century, heroic explorers have proved that humankind has a fire inside that can overcome the most inhospitably freezing regions .. Here is our pick of some of the most amazing."

Our choice included the Shackleton expedition, Sir John Franklin's mission to discover the Northwest Passage, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes who was one of the first men to reach both the north and south poles.

But from the emails and Tweets we've had, it seems some of you are wondering why we've left out others.

"Splutter!!" wrote adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys on Twitter. "Nansen, Herbert, Weber, Shparo, Gjeldres, Scott, Mawson...?"

"What about Alex Hibbert?" said one email, referring to the 23-year-old who recently led the Tiso Trans Greenland Expedition - the longest unsupported polar trek in history.

And there were more.

We always welcome comments - which is why we're enabling comments on all features and news stories when WideWorld relaunches in a couple of weeks. And by the sounds of it, our comments sections will be incredibly active.

So we thought we'd explain a bit about the reasoning behind our choices. The feature wasn't designed to be a definitive list of the greatest polar journeys ever taken - it was simply our list of some of the compelling treks made to both poles. We only included 15, so inevitably we were going to miss out some of the big ones.

Why include the Top Gear trek and miss out Scott of the Antarctic? Partly because we wanted to surprise some of you - did you know Jeremy Clarkson had been to the Pole? As with a large percentage of the features we run on the WideWorld site, we also wanted you to feel that expeditions like these aren't exclusive. Sure, they take guts, incredible determination, unbelievable fitness (unless, like Clarkson, you choose to drive there!), and money, but really anyone can do it if they put their mind to it.

Thanks for all your comments and feedback. We always appreciate it - and we hope that once we've re-launched there will be a lot of discourse on the WideWorld site.