Body found near French island where British boy went missing Pierre Barnes, right, with his father. The body of a young boy has been found in the waters off a French island where a major search has been under way for a 12-year-old Briton who vanished at the weekend. Pierre Barnes, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, disappeared after going for a bike ride on Saturday, hours after arriving for a holiday with his family on the island, near Toulon. His father, Stephen, said that he was informed on Thursday evening by French police that a body had been found and that they wanted him to go and identify it. I believe it will be Pierre. I feel as though it will bring an element of closure and for that we should be grateful," Mr Barnes told the BBC. More than 150 local volunteers joined the search to find Pierre. One of his shoes was discovered on a coastal path on the day after he disappeared, alongside his bike with its chain off. A boy's body was found at around 5pm by bathers in the water south of Porquerolles, according to the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP). Toulon prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux told AFP: "The body matches that of the young boy who went missing on Saturday." He said the physical appearance matched, as well as the clothes, and that a postmortem examination would take place as soon as possible The agency reported that the body was found at Langoustier bay, to the south of the island, not far from where Pierre's bike was discovered. Mr Barnes, a 57-year-old property developer, described the response from the French people to the disappearance of his son as "overwhelming" during a press conference on Tuesday. He and his French wife, Florence, 43, had come to the island for a cycling holiday during the half-term break with Pierre and their other children, Zoe, 17, Desmond, 15, and Clemence. The search for Pierre had been scaled down this week although teams had continued to scour crevices where Pierre may have sought shelter from the winds, while divers looked in ponds and pools. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Barnes said it was "difficult to know" what happened to Pierre and that a number of factors had played a role. "The bicycle went wrong, we had this terrible weather, he went away just at the end of the day, and none of these things in isolation would have been significant, but they just all came together and in consequence we have this potential tragedy emerging," he said. We as parents don't reproach ourselves for allowing our son to go around on the bicycle. He was 12. No one did anything that they shouldn't have done.