Regarding circling areas. No one as mentioned it yet, but they are based on the threshold of the runway. As the DME is near the northern threshold there is another 3000m ie 1.5nm on top of the DME distance. Not sure how far they actually got from the threshold though.
I can't see why you can't circle visually as long as you are above the circling minima and keep the landing area in sight and given it was VMC can't see why that was not possible.