TRIBUTES were paid yesterday to the Yorkshireman regarded as one of Britain's greatest Polar explorers.

Sir Wally Herbert, who was born in York, died in hospital near his home in the Scottish Highlands at the age of 72. He had been suffering from diabetes and heart trouble.

In 1969, he became the first person to reach the North Pole on foot without motorised transport, during a 16-month trek across the frozen Arctic Ocean.

In a career spanning almost 50 years he travelled across more than 23,000 miles of the polar world - more than half of which had never been set foot on before.

Through his explorations, Sir Wally contributed heavily to the mapping of Antarctica and to people's knowledge of the native Inuit of north-west Greenland.

They led to him having a mountain range and plateau named after him in the Antarctic, and the most northerly mountain in Svalbard named after him in the high Arctic.

Yesterday, Britain's best-known living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, said: "Wally was my valued friend and advisor for over 40 years. He was the greatest of all Polar travellers since Captain Scott and kept the UK pre-eminent in pioneering journeys north and south in the Fifties and Sixties."

The director of the Royal Geographical Society, Dr Rita Gardner, said his legacy would not be forgotten.

"As well as his superhuman physical achievements, his expeditions laid the foundations for modern polar science and our understanding of the thinning Arctic ice from climate change," she said.

"Sir Wally is quite simply one of the greatest polar explorers."

He leaves a wife, Marie, who lives at their home in Laggan near Aviemore, and a daughter, Kari.