Esther Dingley’s mother to take DNA test to see if remains are her daughter’s

The mother of Esther Dingley, the British backpacker and blogger who went missing in the Pyrenees eight months ago, will give a DNA sample to French police this week to help identify a human skull found in the mountains.

Police also have asked Ria Bryant, 74, for her daughter’s dental records after the discovery last week near a French mountain pass.

Dispatched to the site after being alerted by climbers, police searched in vain for other remains as well as Dingley’s clothes, her bright yellow tent and her grey and red rucksack.

“Nothing of her belongings was found,” Bryant, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, told me over the phone yesterday from Bagnères-de-Luchon, a town in the French Pyrenees. “It’s upsetting that it’s not clear and