I think a lot of the stuff about the phone is a red herring and reporting getting mistranslated. A man of that generation isn’t usually glued to their phone like a teenager. Unless he was expecting a very urgent call or had a work meeting scheduled (neither of which have been stated), he probably just forgot the phone. Provided his wife had her phone, that’s the emergency contact point for the family covered, so making a six mile round trip just to collect it in that heat isn’t likely. He left at 1:30pm, then boat taking the rest of the party away from the beach was at 4pm, if he made that round trip there’s a chance he would miss the boat and have to walk another 3 miles to get back again, and it would be pointless anyway, just exhausting and very little time left for further time on the beach.
it’s more likely he just doesn’t enjoy sunbathing etc as much as the others and felt like he wanted a walk. The thing about the phone is that it alerted the others when they arrived back that he hadn’t been back to the accommodation. If he had gone back and then decided to go out again such as to go down to the seafront and have a beer at a bar (he was on holiday so of course he may havE done that), if he’s generally considerate his wife would have expected a note or for him to have taken the phone to have been contactable.
They left the beach at 4pm, so unless they stopped somewhere en-route they likely were back at the accommodation by around 5-6pm. Not everyone updates each other on their every move by text message, some people just assume all is well unless they’ve heard otherwise. There wasn’t necessarily any reason to feel any concern until the phone was discovered. The phone itself isn’t the concerning thing…it’s what it implies…that he didn’t return to the accommodation in all that time. In itself maybe not an immediate worry…his wife would know whether it was. If is in his nature to stop off somewhere for food/drink on the way home and get talking to people, on holiday where there is no work or deadlines etc, maybe him not being there isn’t a major panic immediately. There’s a difference between ‘missing’ and just not knowing where someone is. It’s possible as it’s a small town that they did something like took a car or walk to the main area with bars/cafes and did a quick scout for him there…it’s summer and hot, someone can easily loose track of time if social or drinking. If the people they are staying with live on the island they may also have done some obvious checking like calling the local a&e to check he wasn’t admitted as they would know where to phone/look.
It depends on what would be his normal habits and expected behaviour. Him not being there at the accommodation as soon as they returned might not have been an immediate call to the police, they may not have assumed something bad had happened just because he wasn’t there, or even because the phone was still there.
The really significant thing about the phone is that it makes it much less likely that he made it back to the accommodation. What is means is he was ‘missing’ from 1:30pm, whereas if he had collected the phone or left some other sign he’d been back…the timing of his being missing would have been later. The missing from 1:30pm part is what caused the rescue effort to focus on the coastal path as the most likely place a person could fall and land unnoticed. It also means that by the time the police we called he’d been missing for significantly longer so than if he had collected the phone, meaning given the circumstances of the coastal route and presumably they were convinced he wasn’t the type to be inconsiderate and make his wife worry if he was just in a pub…meant they sprung into action quickly.
I really don’t think there is anything weird about the phone issue…I think it’s been miscommunicated in the media and it’s really just relevant because it puts a time-stamp on where he was last confirmed as being alive and well (1:30pm) as earlier than if there had been signs he’d visited the accommodation. The cctv now confirmed as being him at apx 2pm moves that forward. But that still doesn’t help much because him not disappearing on the coast path widens the search not narrows it. There’s also the possibility that if he became confused (which is now looking a the most likely scenario given the safety of where he was and his medical history), he might have turned around and gone back over that same coast path…meaning they still can’t rule that area out even though he made it safely to Pedi.
If being in a state of confusion is the most likely theory the police are working on, that’s probably the hardest to deal with in terms of search…because there may be no logic in the route or direction he headed.
Latest reports are saying sniffer dogs are now deployed, which is possibly their best chance of finding him. He could be doing something strange like sheltering/hiding under an upturned boat in a confused and frightened state if he’s had a sudden memory issue. He might be feeling confusion as to why he is in that country alone and with no phone and intentionally hiding in fear. The previous time he had the memory issue it was resolved by the next morning, but if you add dehydration into that it could be it doesn’t then resolve.
The wife/friends called the police apx 7:30pm to make a missing persons report. I don’t think that seems odd at all. They may have only just got back, or just assumed he was somewhere nearby and tried to look for him themselves first. Sometimes people can also be hesitant to call the police because it makes that fear they are dreading about the situation feel more ‘real’ and they are hoping they are ‘worrying over nothing’. There’s also his fame, it would become a news story in the uk very quickly, and if it turned out he was just in the pub and unaware his wife considered him to be ‘missing’ it would be embarrassing. I think 7:30pm is a perfectly reasonable time to raise the alarm. A lot of people wouldn’t even do it that early, but doing it at that early evening time shows that it was out of character for him to leave his wife in a situation where she wouldn’t know his general whereabouts. He clearly can’t be the type that would just stay in the pub until closing and remain out of contact, otherwise she wouldn’t have assumed the police were needed until later in the night.
If you were in the uk and called the police at 7:30pm to report that a generally healthy man with no obvious mental health vulnerability had not returned home after only being last in contact since lunchtime and was out for a walk in a place generally considered safe and where members of the public would see them or in a small town area….I doubt they would spring into action that quickly to assume misadventure, they’d be at least waiting until it got dark. They don’t even do that when teenagers don’t come home when expected, they usually assume at least until after dark that someone is just out of contact intentionally or lost their phone or forgotten to tell family their plans.
Presumably the Greek police were convinced very quickly that not returning by that time was completely out of character, or thought there were other factors such as this 2019 memory loss episode that warranted it being an instant emergency response as they were starting the search very quickly after he was reported missing.
It would be crazy not to be carrying some water on a walk in that heat.