Only weeks ago Sir Ranulph Fiennes, dubbed the world's greatest living explorer, came within an ice-shard of losing his life during his latest attempt to reach the North Pole. As he face the partial amputation of the fingers and thumb of his frostbitten left hand, Sir Ranulph spoke exclusively to HELLO! at his Exmoor farm

When HELLO! first arranged to meet Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes OBE, third baronet of Banbury, at his isolated home on Exmoor in Somerset, the 150-acre farm was completely cut off by unseasonable blizzards. But, as casually as if he were calling up a cab in Mayfair, Sir Ranulph - Ran, as he prefers to be called - offered to meet us with a sledge and tow us on foot over the snowbound hills.

Conditions like these are tame stuff to the man described in the Guinness Book of Records as the "world's greatest living explorer". He and the ice are old adversaries. Indeed, it came close to killing him only weeks ago when his latest polar bid ended in near-tragedy.

Ran, whose family motto is "Look for a brave spirit", was making his fifth attempt to reach the North Pole unsupported, this time solo and by the still-unconquered direct route from the Arctic coastline of northern Canada. At 56 he is the oldest adventurer ever to attempt this extraordinary feat, which he describes as the "polar grail".

Now, relaxing in his cosy den, surrounded by the writings and memorabilia of countless expeditions spanning 30 years, Ran is ruefully counting the cost of his most recent failure. Like burned sticks, the fingers and thumb of his left hand are blackened by frostbite, giving him constant pain, and he faces the inevitable amputation of the end phalanxes. But it could all have been so much worse: this time Ran barely escaped alive from the hellish regions of ice which ring the North Pole.

"It all began so well", he says. "I was supremely fit, having entered the gruelling Patagonia Eco Challenge in December last year. I was the oldest competitor in the race, and 23 years older than my team-mates, but I kept up, so I was well-prepared for the pole."

Ran's plan was to reach the North Pole by the hardest route of all - from northern Canada. As he explains: "If you were God looking down at the North Pole you'd see a circle of land round the ocean. One side of the circle is Russia and the other side is Canada and North America. If you set out from the Russian side, as I did with Dr Mike Stroud in 1990, you would in theory eventually get to the North Pole with minimal effort because of the polar drift which pushes the ice floes towards the pole. So it is much more difficult to tackle the other route. When you go to sleep in your tent, you wake up and find you have gone backwards, losing seven miles in your sleep."

Ran estimated the trek would take him 85 days, allowing for the fact he would be hauling some 510lb (323 kilos) of supplies and survival kit on two amphibious sledges which he would pull in relay, effectively trebling the distance to be covered. He would begin in the darkness of polar winter and only later benefit from the emerging light.

From his base at Resolute Bay in northern Canada, he was flown by Twin Otter to Ward Hunt Island at the edge of the Arctic Ocean and left to begin his lonely trek. Setting off across a frozen seascape, he reached a wall of ice slabs 15 feet high and hauled the first sledge to the top, only to have it slip away from him and crash on to the ice blocks below. There was a tear in the fabric and he had no choice but to return to an abandoned hut on Ward Hunt Island to make emergency repairs.

It was when he made his second start that disaster really struck. By this time the ice was grinding and moving under the tremendous inner pressure, forming high mounds, with open water suddenly appearing. As he negotiated one of the unstable ice slabs, it suddenly shifted sideways: "I felt the sledge going, pulling me towards the water. I stopped myself by grabbing hold of a block, but the sledge splashed into the sea. It's the sound I dread most.

"I tried to reach for the guide rope, but it was quite clear that the only way I would unsnag it was by putting my hand into the water. It took me two minutes or so before I got the sledge on to a flat surface and I immediately began the standard blood revival technique, which means you windmill your arms viciously and painfully to restore the circulation.

"This time the blood did not respond. My left hand was stiff, the fingers were like sticks. I knew that at best I was already facing amputation. At worst, well, it was now a matter of survival. The expedition was over."

With temperatures down to minus 49 degree and with his body heat dwindling fast, Ran managed to partially erect his tent and start the vital spirit stove, using his teeth to prime the pump and light the matches.

Then he faced the nightmare return to Ward Hunt Island. Feeling exhausted and dizzy, with both hands in excruciating pain, he staggered slowly towards the island, once falling asleep in a snow trough.

"There are worse ways to die than in the snow, you know," he says. "It's a relatively pleasant way of going. After the initial panic you just go to sleep."

But Ran had not intention of facing the final long sleep of death and rallied round.

Finally he made it to safety and summoned help on the short-wave radio, telling his base operator that he had "only just made it" - an unprecedented admission from Ran. He was picked up by ski-plane the next day and airlifted off the ice. "From then on it's all been hospitals," he says. "First in Canada, where surgeons stripped skin and slice blisters, then back in England."

He was actually on the eve of having the tips of the fingers and thumb on his left hand removed when one of Britain's foremost experts in frostbite rang him to advise him to delay the operation.

"What happens is that they cut into healthy flesh, leaving a flap of skin to cover the wound," he explained. "But sometimes it doesn't take and you face further amputations. So I have been advised to wait a month or two until the dead areas are clearer. The downside is pain and a slight risk of gangrene, but if I can save a little more of the fingers and particularly the thumb then it's worth it. Every millimetre counts and could make a vital difference to your capabilities."

Incredibly, Ran has not discounted the possibility of further Arctic adventures, though he admits he may have to settle for expeditions in warmer climes. Despite his reputation as the original Iceman, Ran is equally at home in deserts and hot places. In 1991 he led the Ubar Expedition which discovered Ptolemy's long-lost "Atlantis of the sands" in the desert of Oman - a feat he rates more highly than his string of polar endurance records.

"I believe I know the location of another lost desert city," he says mysteriously. "It's probably a bit much to expect to find two lost cities in one lifetime. But time will tell."

In the meantime, during his enforced "grounding" in the West Country, Ran is turning his attention to writing, with two book projects in mind, including a photographic record of his various polar ventures. "Expeditions don't actually bring in the money," he says. "It's writing that pays the bills."

Ran is a best-selling author with a number of successes to his name, including the former UK number-one bestseller The Feather Men and the highly popular fact-of-fiction pot-boiler The Sett. He has also written an autobiography, appropriately entitled Living Dangerously, and various accounts of his expeditions.

And there is also the farm to run, though Ran cheerfully concedes that this is chiefly the fiefdom of the Boss, as he affectionately calls his wife Ginny (Lady Virginia Fiennes).

"Have you noticed how all the animals around here are black? It's my wife's idea. Rather strange, isn't it?" And indeed, gazing around the fields, with the snow in retreat, you see two black alpaca (the result of a failed experiment in exotic wool production) as well as black cattle and black lambs.

Ginny was Ran's childhood sweetheart and has been his staunchest supporter, accompanying him on many of his expeditions and becoming the only woman to earn a polar medal in her own right.

The early years were sometimes extremely hard, especially when the were seaking backing for expeditions. It took them seven years for instance, to raise the necessary funds for the Transglobe, perhaps Ran's most remarkable expedition to date. From 1979 to 1982, with companions Oliver Shepard and Charlie Burton, he made the first-ever circumnavigation of the world's polar axis, travelling overland to both poles and crossing the whole of Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage.

"We sometimes wonder, Ginny and I, how we lived in those days," Ran recalls. "We had no cheque book, no entertainment of any sort and we worked in a free office at the Duke of York's Barracks. We paid no taxes because we didn't earn enough. Our whole life was spent planning the expedition. We scraped the barrel for a long time.

"I lectured all over Britain, starting at £18 a time, moving up to £25, mostly in dingy town halls, sometimes to a dozen old ladies who where fast asleep. The better the venues became, the bigger were the ladies' hats in the front row.

"Fortunately the expedition was a success and life became more comfortable. The lecture fees went up to £500 at time and my various books on explorations started creeping into the Times and Telegraph Top Ten."

Nowadays, Sir Ranulph Fiennes can command £10,000 for a lecture, a measure of just how far he has climbed in public esteem - though, at 56, he recognises that the world is full of young pretenders waiting to become the "world's greatest living explorer".

"For every Gary Lineker there's a David Beckham waiting in the wings," he remarks.

Adventure is very much a family tradition for Ran, who can trace his aristocratic lineage back to the ninth century. He has the blood of French and English kings in his veins and has ancient connections with the French village of Fiennes, between Calais and Boulogne. But the family gradually became anglicised until now he epitomises most people's idea of eccentric English aristocrat.

Sir Ranulph is the great-grandson of the 16th Lord Saye and Sele and a cousin of the present Baron. He was educated at Eaton, where he was nicknamed "Twinkletoes". Ran hated his years at Eton. As he writes in his autobiography: "My greatest misfortune was to be a pretty little boy. I can hardly blame Eton for that, yet my memories are tarnished because of it."

Because of his prettiness, his fellow pupils called him a "tart" and, in an effort to prove his manhood, he became a champion boxer and took up stegophily, or the sport of climbing buildings, leaving marks of his triumphs all over the school.

Ran, who is a distant cousin of actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, also tried his hand at acting and was once short-listed for the role of James Bond. However, he preferred the real world of derring-do to the make-believe of films and joined the elite fighting corps of the SAS.

The two worlds came into violent conflict when he decided, on a whim, to save the picturesque village of Castle Combe from the unwelcome attentions of a film crew. The setmakers planned to enlarge the local pond and make it look more convincing for a scene in the film Dr Dolittle. Offended by such desecration, Sir Ran set the carefully built dam with explosives. This early example of environmental activism came to the attention of police. He was caught, fined and thrown out of the SAS.

However, he continued his military career with the Royal Scots Greys, following in the footsteps of his father, who shared the same impossible name but died from battle wounds shortly before the current Sir Ranulph was born. Later Ran served as a military adviser to the Sultan of Oman and was decorated for his bravery against insurgents in the Dhofar campaign.

His retirement from the Army marked the beginning of a series of adventures. Among his many exploits he shot up the White Nile in a hovercraft, parachuted on to the Jostedalsbre Glacier and negotiated over 4,000 miles of terrifying Canadian and Alaskan rivers.

Yet, despite the many triumphs in a lifetime of explorations, Ran is almost equally known for a series of gallant failures - five attempts to reach the poles unsupported, including his most recent, and a failed attempt in 1996 to become the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unsupported. Yet, in the process, Rans has raised millions of pounds for charity and helped to test the limits of human endurance under extreme conditions.

"There is always a scientific reason for everything I do," he says. "The point is that man has pushed science to the limit. Now we're back to basics. We're finding out what the body is capable of achieving and, more and more, we're rejecting artificial aids.

"People often say to me, 'I suppose because you're a rich aristocratic playboy you can just swan around the world spending other people's money doing your own thing.' But I'm no playboy and I'm certainly not rich. Leading expeditions is my living.

"What I do matters enormously. For those human beings who feel the need to push against the elements, to battle against what is difficult in space, on mountains, in the polar regions or even back home on the football field - wherever human endeavour wishes to do something better or more difficult, that's where it matters."

Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, Englishman David Mills has taken up Ran's latest challenge to reach the North Pole. With typical generosity, Ran persuaded his backers, Exel Logistics, and his charity, the Cancer Research Campaign, to transfer their allegiance to Mills. At the time of going to press, Mills was still battling his way across the ice, hauling Ran's abandoned sledge.

"I've passed on the baton, as it were," says Ran. "It would be nice to see an Englishman make it first, ahead of the Norwegians for once."

The long and bitter rivalry between British and Norwegian polar explorers goes back to the turn of the last century when the Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat the ill-fated Sir Robert Scott to the South Pole. Ran himself has first-hand experience of this rivalry. In 1990 he and his expedition partner, Dr Mike Stroud, came within 91miles of making the first unsupported trek to the North Pole, but had to be airlifted off the ice - only to see a Norwegian two-man team, led by Erling Kagge, claim the honour.

Ran fiercely disputed that the expedition was genuinely unsupported and maintained that a third man helped his team-mates, acting as a kind of Sherpa, until the final two-man dash to the finishing line at the pole. Ran was accused of bad sportsmanship, a charge which rankled with this most honourable of men. What mattered was that Kagge, in his view, had not observed the rules, however abstruse they might seem to the layman.

This year Ran was once again facing competition from other rivals, as well as testing his own personal limits, and once again he has been forced to stand aside as others take up the challenge to be first.

"It all began so well," he says ruefully. "At first the ice was calm and progress was good. I even began to revise m estimated time for the journey. Ah well, pride before the fall I suppose."

One suspects that, despite his damaged hand, Ran's days as an explorer are far from over. The Iceman will survive to fight another day.