'Alex said he'd find his way home to get an education'

Police to quiz teenager over nomadic upbringing

- Chris Riches

THE owners of a remote French farmhouse where missing teenager Alex Batty stayed said he was eager to go to school and "get back to a normal life".

Alex, 17, jetted back to Britain on Saturday night escorted by police ahead of an emotional reunion with gran Susan Caruana.

She had been searching for Alex ever since he failed to return from a holiday to Spain in 2017 with her ex-partner, Alex's grandfather David, and their daughter Melanie, then 37.

British detectives now aim to quiz the teenager about his six-year disappearance.

Meanwhile, the owners of the isolated home in the Pyrenees mountains have said he left for Britain to get new identity papers so he could enrol at a French school.

Frederic Hambye and Ingrid Beauve, who run Gite de la Bastide, took the youngster under their wing and treated him as a member of the family, it was said. The couple revealed: "He was eager to go to school and get back to a normal life and for that he needed his ID, which he told us he no longer had.