Anyone been following this? – http://www.itv.com/news/granada/2012-04-15/fears-grow-for-cheshire-marathon-runner-missing-in-greece/

I have, because I know the area well (we’ve owned a house in that area for the last seven years)and these are the some of the same tracks and paths that I go riding and walking on.
As far as I’m aware he’s still classed as missing but I can’t see how, with the considerable numbers of people that have been searching, nothing seems to have been found. Ok, it would be quite possible for anyone to be running in that type of terrain and fall, injuring themselves or, even worse, being killed but the Hellenic Mountain Rescue people have been up there for days with dogs and you’d think that they would have found something?

It’s pretty inhospitable terrain in places but a lot of the people that have been searching know the area like the backs of their hands, every twist and turn in the trails and every hidden ravine.
It just seems strange and I have a few slightly off-the-wall theories but I accept that a public forum may not be the place to air these.

My wife never likes me going out riding alone in these sort of places because it can get pretty remote and, sods law, there’s never any phone coverage when you’d most need it. She says she worries from the minute I leave home until she hears my bike coming down the lane behind our house.

Firstly, hope the bloke turns up without harm – but as time goes on then that become more unlikely…

Secondly, re: your own situation, have you thought about a Spot Tracker ? Doesn’t need a mobile signal as it’s satellite based and allows you to trigger a SOS if you have a real problem and also allows your progress to be tracked by your wife (so you could be found if unable to operate the device or she just wondered where you were).

http://www.findmespot.eu/en/index.php?cid=102

Might help set your wife’s mind at rest, or alleviate some of her concerns.

Unfortunately it’s been a long time now (since April 8th) – too long for anyone to have much chance of survival under those circumstances. It must be especially terrible for his wife, who I think has now returned to Britain.

Although it’s a fairly rugged area it’s not somewhere that anyone with any basic navigational skills would get lost, in the true sense of the word. You go east – you end up in the Taygetos range, west and you go down to the coast. Off-piste would be hard walking, and you’d be ripped to pieces by thorns but you could keep heading in the right basic direction.

I’ll show my wife that Spot Tracker device – seems like a good idea.

I heard the son being interviewed on the radio, does sound a bit odd.

It does seem odd – he passed one checkpoint (#4), isn’t recorded as passing the next one 5kms later. That’s not a huge distance nor a massive amount of potential wrong turns to initially search. From what I’ve seen, obvious wrong turns are always marked with a board with a red cross on it anyway. Nor was he running at the back of the field so you’d think other competitors would have been aware of anything major happening.
I’ve not been able to find a GPS track for this particular event, so I don’t know the precise route, of course.

Reggie Perrin has taken up running?

Similar thoughts have crossed my mind…….