Day two in the search in Portugal’s Algarve region for clues to where Madeleine McCann is – and there are pockets of police activity dotted around the vast scrubland.
From where I’m standing, I can see three searches under way, all in abandoned buildings.
To our right, police are using chainsaws to cut down a tree that’s grown inside a derelict barn.
Latest updates from the search
Ahead of us, officers in white hard hats empty rubble from inside another dilapidated building.
To the left, a team of three lift stones through the window of an old stone hut.
It’s thought that ground radar equipment may then be used to scan the floors.
As we walk through the brush, the ground is dry and hard.
‘Nothing has been found’
Digging here is hot, exhausting work – but so far, there is no news.
Police are trying to keep the press back – but the area is too large.
I ask one officer for an update: “Nothing has been found,” he tells me, before heading off to the tents that are the base for the 30 or so German police running this operation.
Many people question just what could possibly be found here 18 years after the three-year-old British girl went missing from her family’s nearby holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.
Professor of Criminology at the University of Porto, Fernando Teixeira, told me that the search will have been meticulously planned.
He says: “They use identification work if any bone fragment appears, and this is done in the laboratory unit.”
He adds: “In the field, through equipment supported by engineering, it is possible to detect whether there are in fact bone fragments that will have been deposited in the geographic areas.”
What do locals think about the search?
Around a mile or so from the search site, we stand outside the Ocean Club Holiday Resort where the McCanns were staying.
The feeling towards press in the village is not warm – it took years for the resort to recover, and even now, mention Praia da Luz and you think of Madeleine.
Taryn Brown runs a beauty spa just 30 metres from the apartment.
She tells me this fresh search has upset locals.
She says: “It keeps dragging down Praia da Luz. All I’ve ever heard about is how badly everyone was affected. It took a long, long time to recover so this keeps dragging it all up again.”
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The McCanns aren’t commenting on this latest operation – they, of course, have been here before – and are used to the heartbreak of nothing being found.
There are two days left to search this land – to uncover something, somewhere that might just lead to a clue as to where their daughter is.
