Inside abandoned caravan where Alex Batty’s mum ‘spent all day on computer’
This is the abandoned holiday caravan where Alex Batty’s mum camped out for six months before abruptly vanishing again.
Melanie Batty, 43, is said to have gone by the name ‘Rose’ and ‘spent all day tapping away on her computer’ at the remote park in the south of France between May and September.
She is not thought to have spoken to any other lodgers at the Camping Le Fort site in Montbel, who were oblivious to her background.
Her son Alex disappeared aged 11 in 2017 after his mother, who was not his legal guardian, took him on a pre-arranged trip to Spain with his grandfather.
He finally landed back in the UK on Saturday evening having been found walking across the Pyrenees, telling reporters he was ‘glad to be home for Christmas’.
The owner of the Camping Le Fort told the Daily Mail Ms Batty paid seven euros a day to live at the site, which provides hot showers, toilets and washing up facilities.
She said: ‘She arrived in May and left without warning at the end of September.
‘She called herself Rose and I have only recently discovered that she was the mother of the missing boy.’
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she saw Ms Batty ‘from time to time’ and would greet her by saying ‘Bonjour’ but the language barrier between them made further chat impossible.
‘She would spend all day tapping away on her computer. I don’t know what she was doing but that was what she did all day,’ she went on.
‘I told her that I was going to cut the hot water to the toilet block and the end of September and she left about that time. No one has seen her for at least two months.’
A friend, Susie Harrison, told The Sun she last saw Ms Batty a few weeks ago.
Describing her as a ‘conspiracy theorist’, she said: ‘She believed Covid-19 was not real, that it was created by the state to control the people.
‘I don’t know what she did for money, but I know she gave therapeutic massages. She really wanted to set up a spiritual community here in the south of France.’
Alex had been living on-and-off in a remote mountain farmhouse since autumn 2021, where his grandfather, David Batty, worked as a handyman in exchange for room and board for he and Alex.
Owners of Gite de la Bastide, Frederic Hambye and Ingrid Beauve, said Ms Batty did not live at the property and during that time she stayed in ‘successive places of residence between Aude and Ariege’ – around 50 kilometres north and 120 kilometres west of the farmhouse.
In a statement obtained by MailOnline, they said: ‘As far as we know, she (Ms Batty) was looking for a place to live in a community. La Bastide does not have this ambition. Nor are we a spiritual community.’
The statement added: ‘As time went on, we saw him as part of our family and we think he appreciated the stability and security we represent for him.
‘We encouraged him to learn French and study. In particular, we helped him find a school where he could be admitted without prior education. He showed a certain aptitude for computers.
‘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.
‘When we learned that he did not have an ID, we offered to drive him to the British Consulate. He told us he would find a way to return to the UK on his own to get new [identity] papers and go back to school. To this end, he told us, he left on December 17 to join his mother.’
They said they knew Alex as Zach and he arrived at the gite with his grandfather and mother, though Ms Batty was said to have never lived there.
The property is in Camps-sur-l’Agly, they said, a commune that had a population of 51 people in 2020, according to the French census.
Tourists, hikers, cyclists and horseback riders travelling in the area are said to visit the site.
Alex has returned to family in Greater Manchester, where he was living as a young boy before he disappeared, and police say is ‘where he wants to be’.
His grandmother Susan Caruana previously said she ‘can’t wait’ to see him.
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