A friend of missing teenager Jay Slater has said he had "cut his leg on a cactus" and did not know where he was.

Lucy Law said Slater, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, would have flagged down any passing car or spoken to passers by and was "not stupid."

Slater has been missing on the Spanish island of Tenerife since the start of this week.

His mother, a team of mountain rescuers, and the local civil guard are searching for him after he disappeared while holidaying with friends.

Law told Sky News he rang her to say he "didn't know where he was", that he "needed a drink" and had "cut his leg on a cactus".

She said: "The thing I find the most weird about this is the fact that there's nobody that's seen him. And he's not a stupid boy - he's got some nous about him.

"I've seen so many people up here and I've asked every single one if they've seen him - this is what I find weird. If he'd seen somebody, or a car, he would have flagged down the car - he would have said he needed a phone to contact someone.

"He would never have his family worrying like this - he would never have us worrying like this...It's just awful - I've never in my life been so worried. I've literally not slept at all since."

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Law said that Slater had posted a picture online of some mountains next to a house he had been to. After driving around, she was able to identify a lamp and some flowers seen in that picture.

She said: "We managed to find the house...I knocked on the door and there were two people there."

"They told me he'd spoken to the next door neighbours and they'd told him there was a bus every 10 minutes back down to Los Cristianos.

"The bus stop was right next to the house. So obviously if he'd gone to get the bus he wouldn't have got lost because it [the stop] was visible from the front door."

Meanwhile, editor of the Canarian Weekly Chris Elkington told the BBC the terrain at Slater’s last known location was “harsh”.

He said: "It’s a rural park where you get a lot of hiking trails, it’s very mountainous, quite sparse, quite barren. Quite deserty in a lot of ways, with some very deep ravines and valleys.

"It’s certainly somewhere you would not want to be in normal conditions without the correct footwear, particularly without water."

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