There's plenty more to follow in coming weeks so do stay tuned. Ben will be blogging as he and Tarka make their way back to the UK. We're also looking forward to getting a first peek at the footage and more photos from the final days.

Thank you everyone for your incredible messages of support and congratulations, both over the last 48 hours and throughout the expedition as a whole. 

Ben and Tarka will be in touch again before too long...  Do keep an eye out @scottexpedition and @polarben on Twitter and on the Scott Expedition Facebook page though in the meantime. For more videos the Scott Expedition YouTube Channel is certainly worth a peek.

Antarctica seemed livid at the fact we were lying happily in our tent yesterday morning, eating well and contemplating our final few kilometres, and it went furiously about trying to bury us and our few belongings with spindrift, and occasionally as far as trying to shake our tent down and blow it away completely. The wind was gusting to nearly 50 knots, the hiss and spray of the snow hitting the windward end of our shelter sounded like heavy rain on a fast-moving car's windscreen, and erratic, gusts made the taut fabric boom and rumble with an alarming violence. It occurred to me that we were lying almost the precise distance away from Scott Base as Scott lay from One Ton Depot, and I thought of him as I lay there in the storm, trying to keep fear from creeping into my thoughts.

What to tell you of yesterday? We dismantled our green Hilleberg Keron tent -home for fifteen weeks now- in the early evening, as soon as the blizzard seemed to abate a little, and headed on a bearing towards a snow airstrip called William's Field (Willy's Field to the locals) and then on to the rough ice road that links the airfield with Scott Base and McMurdo beyond. We had been given two forecasts that suggested worst weather tomorrow, so we forced ourselves out of our sleeping bags and into the cold air once more. Low cloud and windblown snow blocked our view of almost all of the mountains and volcanoes that surround us, but we caught occasional snatched glimpses of Castle Rock and Observation Hill as we descended towards the sea. The wind came at us from our left, and our light sledges were blown out to our right-hand sides at crazy angles as we leant forwards and shoulder-barged our way into it, staying warm by skiing with short strides and a fast cadence, driving hard with our arms. It was weather that on any other day would have been miserable, but today it brought a grin inside the warm depths of my jacket hood rather than a gritted-teeth grimace; it can't stop us now, I told myself, and it obviously knows it.

After an hour we started to make out the huts and vehicles and flags of Willy's Field, and soon after that we were on the ice road that leads to Scott Base and McMurdo beyond. Skiing well past midnight, on a beautiful hard-packed surface, things started to get surreal. We skied past (and waved at) a fat seal, squirming along the side of the road in the opposite direction. A red US National Science Foundation truck approached us after a few more minutes, and I half-lifted a ski pole as a wave. The driver (Chris, from Charleston, South Carolina) stopped, clambered out and surprised us with an incredibly warm welcome. Thank you Chris; you cheered us up immensely on what was becoming a never-ending plod from flag to flag!

As we rounded the corner towards Scott Base, we could finally see the sea of McMurdo Sound, and hear the (glorious!) sound of waves lapping at the nearby shore. I thought I could make out a figure walking our way, to where the road turned from ice to rock; the transition from sea to land and our finish line for this giant trek. "Wait a minute", said Tarka, "There are a few more coming down the hill". It turned out to be almost the entire crew from Scott Base -and a few others from McMurdo- turning out to wave us over the line, on what was a chilly, windy afternoon. I was expecting a quiet finish, and was totally overwhelmed by the warmth of the reception we had from this wonderful gang.

Emotionally, Tarka and I are still numb and exhausted, and we are doing little more than eating and sleeping around the clock now. That he and I are here at all, at the end of this journey, with an unbroken 1,795-mile looping ski track behind us, is something I owe to an awful lot of wonderful people and companies that have carried on believing in me and in this dream, often for many years, and often when it seemed time and again that all hope of even starting it had been lost. There are too many to list and thank in one blog post, but I want to extend as much gratitude as I can wring out of clumsily-chosen words to Land Rover and Intel for breathing life into this expedition, and for making everything you have read about for the past four months possible. I also want to thank KCOM, Drum Cussac, CF Partners, Mountain Equipment, Bremont, GSK, Hilleberg and Field Notes.

My UK-based team have borne me humbly and tirelessly on their shoulders for so long, and I'm sending my sincerest love and thanks to Andy, Chessie, Tem, Gillie and Ryan. Further afield, I'm indebted to Jerry Colonna, Tony Haile, Al Humphreys, Martin Hartley, Anthony Goddard, Steve Jones (and the entire ALE team), Kate Bosomworth, James Lindeman, Alistair Watkins, Stuart Dyble and Philip Stinson.

Tarka and I are both so thankful to our loved ones and to our friends for being there for us always, and for putting up with us not being there for them for so long.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge my brilliant companion for the past three-and-a-half months of suffering and striving, the inimitable Monsieur L'Herpiniere. He has been reliable to the very end of the world, and to the very limits of endurance; both an anchor and a lighthouse in every storm this expedition has weathered. And even if no one had ever heard about this journey; if we had skied in secret, the chance to spend so long in this man's company is something I'm truly grateful for, and I can only hope that, long after we return home, I can continue to learn from and emulate his indomitable spirit, his stoicism in the face of deep discomfort and struggle, his generous and modest nature, and his remarkable self-reliance. He is, to borrow John Ridgway's highest accolade, a good man.

Right now it's time for more food and sleep, but I'll write again soon. Thank you all so much for following, for thinking of us, and for your messages and comments. With my brain addled and dulled by so much hard physical work and by so little in the way of rest and recovery, it's often been a struggle to do this journey justice in words and I fear I've fallen short on many occasions, but I hope you've enjoyed the story. Perhaps the best line I can think of to end on today is a piece of advice Tarka gave me several weeks ago on improving my skiing technique, but it's something that holds true for pretty much everything in life: "With each step, try to reach a bit further forward than you think you can".

Having trekked 1,795 miles across the inhospitable landscape of Antarctica on a return journey to the South Pole and back, Ben and Tarka have achieved the world record for the longest polar journey on foot in history.

The journey, which has taken a total of 105 days (just over ¼ of a year), has pushed the limits of physical and mental fortitude and reset the bar for polar expeditions of the future. Ben and Tarka hauled sleds with a starting weight of almost 200kg each and walked on average 17 miles daily in temperatures as low as -46oC wind chill.

Ben Saunders said, “It is almost impossible to comprehend what we have achieved. Completing Scott’s Terra Nova expedition has been a life-long dream and I’m overcome to be standing here at the finish. The journey has been a mammoth undertaking that has tested the bounds of our bodies and minds each and every day.” 

“At times we found ourselves in dire straits in the intense cold, wind and altitude of the high plateau, weakened by half-rations and closer to the brink of survival than I had ever anticipated this journey taking us. In that light, both Tarka and I feel a combination of awe and profound respect for the endurance, tenacity and fortitude of Captain Scott and his team, a century ago.”

Captain Scott and his men died having covered almost 1,600 miles and this feat has never been surpassed in over 100 years, until today.

Land Rover and Intel are co-presenting partners of the Scott Expedition and have both played an important role in facilitating the expedition. Land Rover having assisted Ben in his training which has taken him to many inaccessible places across the UK, Europe and Greenland; and Intel provided Ultrabooks powered by its latest 4th generation Intel® CoreTM processor technology allowing Ben and Tarka to share their journey with the world along the way in their daily blog (www.scottexpedition.com/blog). Intel put the technology through its paces over several weeks prior to Ben and Tarka’s departure by freezing the Ultrabooks at temperatures of -40C.

Mark Cameron Jaguar Land Rover Director, Brand Experience “ It has been a true privilege for Land Rover to have played a part in this incredible expedition.  I have followed Ben and Tarka each day, trying in some small way to live the experience so vividly and eloquently described through Ben’s blog. To complete this journey has taken the very highest levels of physical and mental fortitude as well as a sheer determination to succeed.”

“We all need heroes, incredible individuals or teams to provide inspiration to spur us on to achieve better for ourselves and the people around us.  There are few feats of any description that exemplify more appropriately the Land Rover mantra of going ‘Above and Beyond’.  Congratulations Ben and Tarka.”

Commenting on Intel’s support of the Scott Expedition, Patrick Bliemer, Regional Manager for Intel Northern Europe, said: “We are honoured to have played a small part in this record-breaking Scott Expedition by Ben and Tarka.  We are incredibly proud that Intel technology has helped him share his experiences with audiences around the world – this unprecedented access is the first of its kind and one which will change the future of expeditions to come.”

Ben will be in touch shortly with the full low down and pictures from this historic moment. In the meantime - a massive thank you to all of you, our amazing followers. World - let's celebrate!

Antarctica, true to form, didn't make life easy or comfortable for us today, and the weather seemed to be messing* with us in a spookily adversarial fashion; luring us - wearing far too little - out of the tent with bright sunshine and a still warmth first thing, before pelting us with a blizzard barely ninety minutes later. The wind intensified just as we stopped to eat and drink at our first break, and as we sat on our sledges with our down jackets on and our backs to the gale, whirling eddies and vortices of sandy spindrift were spun up into our faces, filling our pockets and sledges and anything else left unzipped for more than a few seconds with fine, gritty snow. It calmed down before we started skiing, then revved up again at the next break, in a pattern that dogged us for most of the day.

As I mentioned yesterday, our sheer exhaustion seems to be overriding any chance of outright back-slapping glee at being so close to pulling this vast journey off (our GPS says we've clocked a cumulative 2,859km now, which is 68 back-to-back marathons dragging sledges) but team morale is definitely much improved, and the prospect of skiing a mere 15km after a big lie-in seems infinitely more manageable than another mammoth day. Interestingly, despite never having seen the view we faced today, skiing past White Island towards the giant flanks of Mount Erebus until we picked up our final (hundred-day-old!) depot, before hanging a left and heading past Castle Rock towards McMurdo Sound, the scenery felt strangely familiar after so many years of dreaming of reaching this point.

We'll start skiing tomorrow in the late afternoon UK time so don't be alarmed if the tracker doesn't budge for a while after our usual kick-off. We should finish in the evening, but it may take us a while to get online again and send a blog post back, so watch this space. I'm sure Andy, Chessie and the team in London will update the site as soon as we phone in from Ross Island, so you'll be the first to know when we're home and dry.

At the moment, the magnitude of it all hasn't really sunk in yet, though I'm excited about getting more than five hours sleep for the first time in weeks, and I suspect lying here tomorrow morning the excitement - and if I'm honest, the sheer relief - may start to finally kick in...

*This may not be the precise word Tarka used as we were shouting at each other in the blizzard, but it was hard to hear him over the wind.

Objectively, we're both in no doubt that our extreme physical fatigue is dragging our emotional states down, but we've both shared an unusual feeling lately of something approaching disappointment; we'd perhaps hoped Antarctica would hold more moments of beauty and joy, but the reality is that this has been - for the most part - a vast challenge that has taken us to the very outer fringes of our physical and mental endurance. Exploring those seldom-trod human realms has been a fascinating journey, but it's a frustratingly hard story to convey, as no one will ever know what it was truly like for us.

The other side of this frustration, however, is a bond with Tarka that I'll share for life. "Closer to home, closer to home", was a mantra that I started repeating to myself with each stride today, part-way through a 45-minute session that I began to fear I couldn't make it to the end of. We both fell over again on invisible sastrugi in the flat light, and at one point I feared I might have broken a bone in my forearm. These last days are proving as difficult as any that have preceded them. And speaking of last days, we plan to finish our very final one at the shore of Ross Island, by the New Zealand Antarctic station Scott Base.

It seems a logical - and historically relevant - spot to finish as it's the same point Scott would have aimed for (and the one that Shackleton and Wild reached in late February 1909 before being picked up by boat, as Scott would have been). It's impossible for us to walk from here to Scott's Terra Nova hut as we're at the end of the summer and McMurdo Sound is now open water, just as it was a century ago (though there's also an American icebreaker that burns 4,500 gallons of fuel per hour keeping the Sound ice-free these days too).

The aircraft we've chartered to take us back to Chile can't pick us up from here until the 8th, so we've decided to split tomorrow's giant day into two normal days, and we should arrive at Scott Base on the evening (UK time) of Thursday 6th. Keep your eye on the map!

Despite our proximity to the finish line, our sheer exhaustion seems to be standing in the way of us getting excited just yet, and lying in the tent in the evening getting psyched-up for another day of the same after too little sleep is never easy. Tarka's pep talk this evening contained one of his best lines yet: "Mate, we've gone a hundred and two rounds with Antarctica and we've won every one of them. Tomorrow we're going to win round one hundred and three."

That's all for now, as I desperately need some sleep! We plan to do a "normal" day of 38-40km tomorrow and then a jumbo last day on Wednesday 5th, with about 30km before picking up our first depot, where we'll pick up one day's food, pitch the tent, scoff it all, sleep for an hour or so and then carry on for roughly 25km to the shore of Ross Island. Watch this space...

It's getting properly cold during the middle of the day now, as the sun dips lower and lower, and we had an ambient temperature of -20 degrees C. as we stopped halfway through today's ten hours. The surface continues to make life very hard indeed, and Antarctica certainly isn't letting up as we approach the final few miles. We picked up another depot today, the second we dropped on the way out, so we're well stocked-up with food and fuel, and we have the backs of the sledges to lug around now too, just to add to the fun.

While we still feel physically very weak, especially with an extra few kilos on the sledges, the additional calories we're taking on now have made a huge difference to our mental states; we're both able to hold trains of thought for far longer, and the sessions during the day seem to pass more quickly as a result of being able to lose ourselves in intricate daydreams and detailed future plans rather than drooling over imaginary burgers every few minutes.

Finally, I've finally been given the all-clear to let you in on something I've been excited about for the past year or so: the custom-made Bremont watch I'm wearing, called the Supermarine Terra Nova (named, of course, after Scott's last expedition). I've been working with Bremont for several years now, and I'm a huge fan of the brand, the incredible timepieces they make, and of the two inimitable brothers who started it all, Nick and Giles English. They're an inspiring duo, and they've worked astonishingly hard to do what many thought impossible, in building a British watch company from scratch that can not only stand its ground against some long-established and deeply-respected competition, but lead the way too. A reliable watch is one of the most critical tools of my trade, and I've been lucky enough to work with Bremont in creating my dream expedition watch, and one that will go on sale a little later this year.

Here's some more detail on the watch that has tracked every second of my 101 days in Antarctica so far from Giles himself:

"This is a custom mechanical watch developed for Ben to be a very effective tool for his expedition, made with an aircraft-grade titanium to reduce weight increase strength and make it 2000m water resistant. The mechanical movement is built with a special vibration mount that has the ability to protect the watch against extreme shocks and that also functions as a thermal insulator. Quartz (battery-powered watches) are prone to being affected by very low temperatures so the Bremont Terra Nova uses a mechanical automatic movement tested to -40c before Ben's departure. This is Bremont's first non-chronograph GMT watch giving a second time zone. This, when combined with the use of the 360 degree bezel, can be very effective as a tool for solar navigation. Scott would be pleased that the watch was developed and built in the UK."

The sun shone for the first hour or so (and we had a cracking view of Minna Bluff to our north west, or to the front and left hand side as we ski towards Ross Island) before a giant blanket of cloud descended with tedious predictability, giving us every combination today from fog so thick we almost lost sight of each other a few metres apart, to a merely irritating flat light that made navigating hard. The surface was hopeless as well; really sticky with lots of lumps and ridges and mini-sastrugi, and it's been snowing most of the day which doesn't help matters either.

Despite all of that, our mojo was much improved today, principally as we're no longer starving hungry thanks to the bonus ration bag we can split over the next two days, giving us an extra 3,000 or so calories per day. I've gone for the Winnie the Pooh approach with mine (if I eat it all now there'll be less to drag tomorrow) but managed to save a few bars and the main meal so it'll be double dinner night tomorrow evening.

I've also been meaning to write about two other important techniques we've used to keep going. When Tarka was mid-way through a particularly epic expedition on the southern Patagonian icecap with his wife Katie (so epic that their tent was eventually shredded in a storm) he turned round during a blizzard to see her performing miniature shadow-boxing moves with her mittens on. "I'm pretending I'm Rocky. He would get through this", she shouted into the wind, by way of explanation.

The man hug is something the English rarely perform well or with any degree of comfort, except perhaps muddied, bloodied and battered after a good game of rugby, but it's something we're doing more and more out here, as a way of reaffirming our solidarity and defiance in the face of Antarctica's daily attempts to make our lives as challenging as possible. It's looking like four days left in the sledge harnesses as I type this, so the end is very much in sight now...

As we get closer to winter and later into the season, the sun is dipping lower each day at around our midday (local midnight) and we now get a very cold couple of hours part-way through the day. We both seem to be so depleted, with such low body fat and so little muscle left to generate warmth that - perhaps paradoxically, after spending 99 days on the coldest continent on earth - we're now very susceptible to getting cold, and we both struggle to warm up again if we do 'go down', meaning we have to be very quick to put on extra layers as soon as the temperature starts to drop.

We've had some wonderful, well-meaning messages imploring us to 'enjoy' and 'treasure' and 'cherish' these last few days on the ice, but the truth is that the days are - for 95% of the time at least - hellish now, and it's all we can do to keep moving for our 90-minute sessions, battling the ever-stronger desire to stop and rest (or give in and quit entirely). We have extra food from tomorrow (Saturday 1st Feb) so things may improve on that front but the enjoyment of these  next few days will, I fear, only come in hindsight.

We passed the position of Scott's final camp today, by far the most poignant milestone of the expedition, the point at which Captain Scott, Edward Wilson and Birdie Bowers died in their tent, eleven miles short of their largest depot of food and fuel. Scott writes: "The surface... causes impossible friction on the runners. God help us, we can't keep up this pulling, that is certain. Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess... We mean to see the game through with a proper spirit, but it's tough work to be pulling harder than we ever pulled in our lives for long hours, and to feel the progress is so slow. One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though outwardly cheerful."

After hauling our own sledges over every mile that Scott and his men covered, I think of what insight we can offer from our unique vantage point. Of course, we have had advantages that Scott could not have even dreamt of, yet after pulling our loads from the very start of the Ross Ice Shelf, we found ourselves in dire straits in the intense cold, wind and altitude of the high plateau, weakened by half-rations and closer to the brink of survival than I had ever anticipated this journey taking us. In that light, both Tarka and I feel a combination of awe and profound respect for the endurance, tenacity and fortitude of these explorers, a century ago.

I also find myself feeling intense compassion for Scott himself. Unlike Shackleton, who played the PR game well and won widespread public admiration and acclaim, Scott's diary and his last private letters were prized from his frozen body and picked over, becoming a poignant and tragic tale that has been retold by dozens of biographers and torn apart by countless critics ever since. Shackleton - quite rightly - was and is held up as an exemplar of leadership and a paragon of good decision-making under the most severe pressure, but my lasting impression of Scott is of a man whose true tale has been laid bare for all to see. As a result he emerges as a human being like all of us, with fallibility, self-doubt and insecurity, yet also as a man who galvanised and inspired his men by his own example to give their all against the most fearsome odds and nightmarish conditions.

In David Crane's brilliant book on Scott (I have it here in the tent on my Kindle) he writes "And if in small things he was found wanting, in big things very seldom. The worse the crisis... the better was Scott." Captain Scott lived and died with a rare degree of courage, and passing so close to the spot at which he wrote his final words, I feel a sense of privilege at our modest connection with his incredible story, and gratitude for having the chance to share the tale of our own journey over this vast continent with a new generation.

On that note, I'm finally allowed to tell you that I've had the honour of being invited to speak at this year's TED Conference, from 17-21st March. It's TED's 30th anniversary and the event is being held in Vancouver for the first time, so it promises to be a very special (and rather nervewracking!) few days. I can't wait.

Last up, I'm totally behind on your questions, but someone asked recently about what sort of dreams we're having at night, and the answer is that neither of us can recall them at all now; we fall asleep and wake up again (usually with a feeling of deep dread about facing another nine or ten hours) seemingly moments afterwards.

Finally, I need to send a big hello to Sam, who goes to St Andrews School and gave a talk to his class on Captain Scott. I hope it went well, and I'm sad I wasn't there to hear it!

Alas this is a speedy update as we're late from picking up the depot and putting in a big-mileage day on a surface that wasn't ideal, and I'm the snow-melting chef tonight. It was colder today though Antarctica treated us (finally!) to a spot of sunshine, and to our great surprise we were able to pick up and follow our old tracks again. The sun is noticeably lower in the sky with each passing day now, though of course, we're still skiing during the local night time, and it starts to rise higher again as we pitch our camp in the evening, meaning we're nice and warm in the tent.

Tarka and I talked a lot today about what it must have been like for Scott, Oates, Wilson and Bowers out here a century ago, and more than a month later into the autumn than we are now. The longer we're out here, the more our sense of awe and respect at what those men faced and endured continues to grow.

I'll answer some more questions tomorrow (when Tarka's cooking) but for now I'll sign off by thanking you all again for your interest and support. After grumbling about whiteouts and headaches for days, I'm happy to report that Tarka and I are both starting to get excited about how close we're getting to the finish line.

More soon...

One thing we are excited about is that Andy informed us on our evening check-in satellite phone call that we appear to have become the longest man-hauling (i.e. human-powered, sledge-dragging) polar expedition in history, by more than 335km.

Lastly, in today's gloomy weather there was nothing that inspired me to take a photograph. "Take one in the tent," said Andy, "People love that. Even a food bag or something." So that's what you've got: a still-life taken from the position of my head. As you can see, it's Thai chicken curry tonight (we peeled off the food bag labels in Chile to save weight) and as I'm not cooking, I'm in charge of overseeing battery charging from the solar panels.