Help with trespassing neighbour

Soot2006

New 6ft fence, making sure  width and angles are appropriate to the right of way (bins, bicycles?) ... You lose a bit of garden, but you can landscape properly and never have been step into your sight again while you're having a lunch!

Soot2006

Added: just make sure he doesn't treat the resulting alleyway as "his" properly.  Keep using it , maintaining it, let you kids play hide and seek in it, etc ...

Offer his his pathway to his gate back. Totally outrageous that he added hardscape to your land!

Jeepers_Creepers

Until you confirm via both sets of deeds, it would look as tho' you have two options. One is to stick by the (presumed) letter of the deeds - ie insist on a 3 day notice - and the other is to fence off that path to his gate, but - as mentioned by others - leave a gate at each end for you to have full access to it. Add in writing that it's for privacy only, and implies no further rights to the neighb other than that stated in the original deeds.

For the former solution, you'd need to get a bit serious. He can claim all he wants about who has said what, and how he's gained rightful entitlement to access it when he wants to - I don't believe a word of either of these claims. For his to have gained any form of adverse entitlement or whatever it's called, he'd have to prove he had unfettered access for a decade or more. Unless he's been keeping a record of this, it's only his word, and is easily countered by you claiming there were weeks/months/whatevs when he didn't come through your garden.

And, for the former scenario, you'd really need to (a) have LP on your insurance and (b) hope they'd be willing to take it on - 'cos there's a very good chance they won't; they hate this kind of messy and uncertain situations.

If you are absolutely confident of your rights in this situation - ie that the deeds are clear that 3 day's notice is definitely a requirement before they traipse across your garden - and if you are up to the challenge, then lock the gate and put a letter through their 'box. If they damage the lock, it's criminal trespass. If this covenant is as it says, I think it was clearly intended to allow 'reasonable' access, almost certainly for gardeny stuff - things that would not be reasonable to have to take through the house. Pretty obvious this would include wheelbarrows, large amounts of garden material, gazebos... yougettheidea. I would not consider it reasonable that they take cans of paint and stuff like that on a daily basis - that can go through the house, thanks. Ladders? Yup - fair enough.

Bottom line, I think is - if you try and enforce the 3-day rule, and even if you manage to successfully, it'll continue to be a bind. The guy sounds a bit like a git, so you can see him still continuing to use your garden for day-to-day stuff, but include a stepladder or something on one trip just to make it 'legit'. Ie - he'll take the Mick.

You might just want to fence off the new path. Does he have windows along that wall which would also suffer from a  small loss of light? Result...

Don't forget to paint his side of the fence (and yours if you like) a nice rich blue, and sprinkle it with golden stars. Double-result.

theoretica

Soot2006 said:

 Totally outrageous that he added hardscape to your land!

OP - how long have you been in this property? Was it your land when the path was added, or a previous owner who may have been happy with this? I was reading that this situation long predated your moving in, and that path was there when you viewed and bought - and what a pity you didn't investigate more before buying.