I am mildly surprised that nobody has commented on the extraordinary story that has been prominent in both the French and British press. But then, of course, it is far less interesting than posting about pet dogs.
Gus
Burn!
It is an extraordinary story, but so far only the bare bones have come out, and he remains a minor.
Perhaps when there is more meat on the bones, there may be something to say, though you may have an opinion you’d like to express now?
Why?
I don’t know the young person, or his family. He seems to be fine by all accounts, and the initial news reports are often quite wrong. So far seems that he’s child that was looked after by his parents in an off-grid way and now being a ( near) adult wants to do something different. Not really of much interest to me.
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I must admit I feel exactly the same Jane, no interest whatsoever and it does feel like a 4/10 story being hyped into an 8/10 story if that makes any sense, more odd than shocking, but I had expected a lot more chitchat on here as tends to be the way with this sort of stuff.
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It’s certainly an unusual story. The French press have covered it because he was found in France by a public spirited young man delivering medical material, who offered him a lift when he saw him walking in the dark late at night in heavy rain. As I understand it his grandmother was his legal guardian. His mother - who didn’t believe in schooling and wanted to live an ‘alternative lifestyle’ , was given permission to take him on a short holiday to Spain. But he never returned to the UK. His grandmother reported him missing at that time. He seems to be very resourceful and level headed and decided while in France to run away, at the age of 17, wanting to have a proper, normal life. Good for him.
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Almost anything is more interesting than dogs to me, but it’s a non-story.
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Nobody stopped you posting about the story before this if you found it interesting, why wait to see if any one else did 
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I found the story fascinating for several reasons, most importantly something very similar happened to one of my nephews,
When his parents divorced, his mother who’d previously gone off to live in a Himalayan ashram, took the younger boy out of school in Valencia and went to live with a yurt builder in a field outside Madrid. From there she went to join a fundamentalist Christian sect in the Pyrenees who only ate food mentioned in the Old Testament and whose members were not allowed cell phones or internet access (unsurprisingly, they had a very professional web-site that was used for recruitment purposes and fundraising).
A few years later my nephew stole some cash one night and escaped. In the years since despite a lack of formal education, he’s been making a living installing solar panels and become very capitalistic. Meanwhile his elder brother is a vegan living in the mountains on an off the grid organic small holding and makes mandolins in his spare time
Glad neither wife nor I have any children…
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I’ve been reading it too, some of the descriptions of where he was found (Revel, flat in the valley, not too far from the motorway nor Toulouse) as being ‘remote’ ect had me rolling my eyes at the authors!
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The one thing that I DO find interesting about the case is that in highly regulated France, it appears possible to ‘disappear’ and live off-grid in a way that seems impossible in the crowded UK.
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Scottish highlands, depths of Wales - still possible.
I hope the silliness over all of this doesn’t unbalance Alex - he seems a remarkably sensible young man.
Edit or maybe not so remarkable - living off grid can be a very valuable education and can build resilience and independence.
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Not quite - it seems that he had been living with his mother and grandfather in France but as neither was his legal guardian he had technically been abducted by them. His mother then announced that she wanted to move to Finland at which point (and now being quite old enough to make up his own mind, though not legally an adult) he decided he’d had enough of the alternative lifestyle.
As you say, odd, but not that interesting.
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And a 10/10 story that has been completely ignored on SFis the death of the 16 year old, Thomas, in Romains sur Isère. Very shocking and alarming for the future.
My other nephew’s actually in a remote part of NW Spain and building up all sorts of difficulties by refusing to interact with the authorities. He and his partner failed to register the birth of their child and are against him going to school,
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Yeah, not too far from where I live. The market in Revel is really good, so we go there often. I wouldn’t call Revel exactly ‘remote’ either. Maybe if you’ve lived all your life in a city, then it could be described as such.
For those saying, what’s the issue with his mother taking him off wherever, she had lost custody of him, and the boys grandmother was his legal guardian. So legally, he had been abducted and if she is found, then will possibly be extradited and charged.
Edit: Beaten to it by @billybutcher .
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Especially if you are a dodgy foreigner and don’t have any real contact with French admin. He supposedly went to Spain with his mother so presumably got into France some undocumented way. He probably wasn’t even declared as resident in France. I wish all of these ghastly people* were chucked out.
*Edited to add that by ‘ghastly people’ I mean people who could perfectly well be here legitimately and are not forced under the radar, and don’t come from war-zones or dictatorships.
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There are quite a few of these so called cults living up in the Pyrenees, the local paper did an article on the problem earlier this year and how the leaders of said sects are nothing more than brainwashing people to believe their ideology. I think the authorities do come down hard on those they eventually catch especially if criminal charges are brought by the victims/followers especially females.
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Thousands of British managed it! And even now, 7 years later people still keep popping up with no healthcare, driving licence, tax return etc etc just a cash in hand job and a ford transit, or a state pension going to UK account.
Equally in the UK there are people who are undocumented, mainly refugees, but other British born people.
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It’s that in combination with the off-grid living. I could imagine hiding in plain sight in a crowded city, but not in a wilderness.
It’s quite possible: Into the Wild (film) - Wikipedia