The Madeleine McCann review team are certainly clocking up the miles and expanding their horizons.

Initially we were told that the Scotland Yard review would be largely a paper exercise, but now we learn three detectives spent a few days in Barcelona last month.

That's on top of three trips to Portugal since the Prime Minister ordered the review on the fourth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance in May, 2007.

Why Barcelona? Perhaps because that was the base of the private investigators Metodo 3 the McCanns hired at great and mostly fruitless expense.

Or is it because that was the sighting of the Victoria Beckham-lookalike suspect, seen and heard outside a marina restaurant asking a complete stranger: "Have you got the girl?".

The Yard is reluctant to discuss details of the latest trip, maybe because staff are conscious of the expense totting up by its 30-man squad at a time of severe cutbacks.

Some senior cops felt they were bounced into the "investigative review" by an over-anxious Prime Minister who responded to pleas from Kate and Gerry McCann.

In the old days a full-team from the Yard was regularly parachuted in to help rescue major unsolved crimes, home and abroad.

And I'm sure they are just as welcome in Portugal and Spain as they were in Pontefract and Stevenage.