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‘Missing’ British Boy Alex Batty Admits He Made Up His Pyrenees Trek

In first interview, Alex Batty says he invented story about crossing the mountains to protect his mother and grandfather.

A British boy who reappeared in France after going missing for six years said he made up a story about crossing the Pyrenees on foot to stop police from tracking his mother down. In his first interview since returning to the U.K., Alex Batty, now 17, told The Sun he’d had enough of the “nomadic” lifestyle and decided his future was back in England, where he could study and finally make friends his own age—although his “anti-vax” mother was against it. Alex disappeared on a vacation in Spain with his mother, whom he described as a “great person... but not a great mother,” and grandfather in 2017 and had since lived in hippie communities in France, Spain, and Morocco. After being picked up by a delivery driver near Toulouse—“I was a little bit worried. I thought, ‘What kind of lunatic would pick up another lunatic in the middle of the night in the pouring rain?’”—Alex said he had walked across the Pyrenees from Spain, but in fact he’d only walked from a nearby town. “I’ve been lying to try and protect my mum and grandad but I realise that they’re probably gonna get caught anyway,” he said.