The mother of the Angus man who has been missing in Portugal for more than two weeks is remaining hopeful he will be found alive.
Jon Edwards, 30, was last seen at his flat in Lagos in the West Algarve on the morning of September 15 three days after sustaining a head injury.
He left his mobile phone, clothes and passport behind in his apartment.
His mother Lesley, 53, has just returned from the area in an attempt to try to find out more about her son’s disappearance.
She is clinging to the possibility Jon might have joined one of several hippy communes in the area.
“I’ve got to try to stay positive, even if it does seem a bit far-fetched,” she said.
“It’s the one area where there’s anything positive. There are too many other negative possibilities.
“It’s been too long for him to just be wandering about and be okay.
“He obviously wasn’t in the right frame of mind when he went anyway because of his head injury what young lad leaves his phone behind?
“It was glued to his hands and he had no money either.”
Jon posted on his Facebook page that he had knocked himself unconscious by falling down a hill in the early hours of Friday, September 12.
He was sent home from his job as a chef after vomiting later that day and suffered from headaches and dizziness in the following two days before he disappeared.
Lesley and Jon’s sister Kenna flew to Portugal last week to speak to the police, colleagues and the British Embassy.
The pair also put up posters in the area.
Lesley appeared on national television in Portugal appealing for information but no positive leads have emerged.
She said she had been unimpressed with the police’s investigation into the disappearance and claimed detectives had not even spoken with neighbours adjacent to the flat in which he was living.
“I spoke with the neighbours and they hadn’t been contacted by the police,” she said.
“As it happens, they moved in after Jon disappeared so don’t know anything but I’d have expected the police to do more to establish whether there was someone in the flat with him during the day.”
She continued: “The police questioned his work colleagues but they never searched the scrubland which surrounds the town.
“If this happened in Britain the lifeboat would have been out to search the coast. This wasn’t done either.
“I went to the police with the British Consul to raise my concerns and to mention the possibility that he might be at one of the hippy communes.
“They told us that the investigation was ongoing and that the possibility there was a criminal element hasn’t been discounted.”