Missing Woman Nicola Bulley 3

[ofwarren]

I couldn't see another post so thought I'd create one.

There is a police press conference this afternoon. I can't see a time for this but it's sounding like a routine one.

A friend of ours drowned. The police tracked down where they had fallen in fairly quickly. Divers searched for a few days but at this time if year they can barely see past the end of their nose in that type of river. Any rubbish or weeds complicate the search. With our friend their body was found not far away 4 weeks later by a dog walker once it had come to the surface. No personal items were spotted earlier and it was a busy stretch of river with a lot of dog walkers/ runners etc. The colder the water the longer it takes for decomposition gases to build up and bring the body to the surface.

Agreed. It is a main through-road but it is not a particularly busy road.

All you have to do is look it the river, you can see for yourself it’s not fast moving.

Are we on day 12? If the tide is in and out then 12 days is a longtime to travel down the river towards the sea.

I have been confused about the same thing. I live in a rural area and fields with a river running through go on for miles without any cctv coverage. Although I am not local to the area where nicola went missing this explanation has just never made sense to me.

A very disheartening news update. When the policewoman said something like "none of this has led to us finding nicola" my heart just sank for her family.

"It's not the A6 and I very very much doubt it was 700 cars within 5 minutes on that road"

@BaronessEllarawrosaurus not local then? Garstang Road is the A6, the short bit after Churchtown is also called Garstang Road for a stretch, and that is where 700 cars passed in 5 minutes. There will have been even more traffic than that on the A6. It is a very busy thoroughfare at all times

"Agreed. It is a main through-road but it is not a particularly busy road."

So you're saying the police are lying about that? It's bloody busy when I go on it daily 😅

I'll hold my hands up to that but in my defence I'm from great ecc and it is Garstang road at that point, stupid thing keeps changing its name

It's the main route to Lancaster and the M6 from over this way. It's a very busy road

There are plenty of properties backing on to those fields. If it's anything like our local park then at least some of those properties will have direct access into the field (whether they are supposed to or not) so could it be possible for her to have exited the area without going down one of the few official exists?

She's obviously got mixed up as it's Blackpool Lane, then changes to Garstang Road a bit further up, presumably there's a parish boundary there. Not particularly inspiring that she's conflated two road names!

I still don't understand how, if the river was particularly slow moving where she was, how she managed to be swept to the fast moving part, then potentially out into Morecambe Bay. The Bay is treacherous though, and the number of rivers flowing into it make it even more so. The tidal bore can be extremely fast, and it's full of quicksand. Not an easy place to find someone.

Could someone clarify which pathway is the garstang lane exit please. Is it actually onto garstang lane or is it the Blackpool lane path she entered on?

I'm still struggling to understand how the body could pass through the weir, although I am not familiar with the area. Maybe if the river was in flood, but it's clearly not.

I'm so sorry about your friend 💐

I believe the police fully believe poor Nicola has drowned and this is a body search, and seems there is no evidence of anything untoward. I believe them.

The simplest answer is tragically the most likely; for some reason she came into difficulty and has drowned. Heavy clothing is horrendous in water, I did some swimming training a long long time ago and it involved wearing clothes (jeans, jacket) and I can understand how you could easily get into trouble. And the river was very, very cold. Shock would have set in within minutes, very disorientating and makes you utterly weak.

I am surprised the dog wasn't wet though, you'd have thought he would have waded in to try to get to her, either thinking she was in trouble or thinking it was a game. Maybe he didn't see her I the river, it seems it must have happened so quickly.

I wonder how she fell in? Did she see something, trip, lose footing? It's just so sad.

The police are under huge pressure and being attacked for saying it wasn’t criminal etc. this is this officer saying they are looking at everything to reassure the public.

The latest press conference was clearly an attempt to win back public confidence with some very carefully worded statements.

@confounded234 I would be interested to know the same. It was quite widely predicted yesterday that the narrative would quickly change towards a focus on Nicola's body being washed out to sea.

No, there are all sorts of things in the sands in Morecambe Bay. People, horses, vans, tractors etc. have all disappeared without trace over the centuries. The never found two of the bodies of the cockle pickers, although the skull of one of them was found a few years afterwards.

It's the Blackpool Lane entrance near the bridge.

And oddly, despite the definitive map having that section of road labelled as Blackpool Lane, all the houses have Garstang Road as their postal address.

There is no Garstang Lane.

For some reason that reads like you’re having a go. I can’t fathom why you would though,

i have no idea what the divers from the start think . They have not given their opinion as far as I know.. And at no stage has the police attritbuted the view irs fast moving to those divers.

if you know otherwise and they have spoken and said it’s fast moving , then provide a link.

He also said he would find her within an hour.

I think the timings are a bit too neat for this not to have been planned in some form. I am leaning towards a staged disappearance.

I think there must be evidence that the public are not aware of that pointed to her being in the river. They were too adamant that it wasn’t criminal at the start.

I think it is rather suspicious that the CCTV camera at the caravan park was broken when she disappeared. Could it have been deliberately tampered with so there is no evidence of her disappearing. In this case I think the 2 scenarios are she has gone off of her own accord with someone pre planning the CCTV to not be working or someone has abducted her and the phone and dog were left specifically to make the police think she had entered the river.

I do enjoy reading thrillers and it does sound far fetched but what other explanation is there!!

I think this is the weir in St Michaels www.geograph.org.uk/photo/869245 That doesn't look like something a body would easily travel over in a period of low flow. If the body is down stream of there it HAS to go over that weir.

I'm not having a go its just curious that a man who has released a book within the past week, railroaded himself into being an unofficial spokesperson for the investigation even though he is not privy to most of the investigation is seen as more of an expert than the specialist diving teams and other professionals who have been working on this with the police from the start. Of course the police base their view on the input from these professionals that they have assigned to assist.