Why do people have garden gates?

[FMurtz]

I suppose it depends on the jurisdiction but I think you would find that any one is allowed entry up to the front door unless steps are taken to stop this.

[S Viemeister]

Our place is in the middle of the common grazings, so not particularly posh.

I believe so.

[NY]

They probably have to have a lawful excuse for being there, though. Delivering letters, or putting fliers through everyone's letter box, or touting for bob-a-job etc are probably regarded as legal, as is calling on that specific person to see if they are in and want to go for a pint at the pub.

But being there for no good reason (or even for suspected bad reason) would be a different matter.

I lived next door to a policeman, and he kept an eye on the houses in the estate on Mischief Night and Halloween for lads (not from that estate) who were going round throwing eggs at people's front doors. He once nabbed a lad who claimed that he was going to visit his gran to take her a box of eggs that she'd asked for. When he couldn't say what her name was, and guessed an incorrect house number, and couldn't explain why the box only had two eggs in it, and there were egg-stains on the house next door, my neighbour nicked him for malicious damage.

There is probably a pass-and-repass clause as well, as there is technically for public footpaths in England and Wales: you are allowed to walk along a footpath to get from A to B and back again, but you are not (technically) allowed to stop and have a picnic or spend ages in the same place. I think it was added to the public footpath legislation after a wealthy racehorse owner objected to people stopping on a nearby public footpath, armed with binoculars and notebooks to note how well his various horses were running so they could sell this information to bookmakers that were taking bets on the horse races.

I know that Scotland has implied "Open Access" for the whole of the country, and so doesn't have defined rights of way ("everywhere" is a right of way, subject to the exclusions like houses, railway lines etc), but I've always wondered whether marked paths and tracks are still shown on OS maps to denote whether there is a defined route that is habitually walked, so you know that this will be compacted ground and not a ploughed field, and probably way-marked, as opposed to land that may have all sorts of hazards such as streams, bogs etc with no defined crossing points - in England and Wales, you can *usually* assume that a footpath that goes up to a stream bank and continues on the other side will have some means of getting across, whether it's little footbridge, stepping stones or else is so shallow that it can be forded as long as the stream is not in flood. Looking at a Scottish OS maps, there don't seem to be any routes which are marked, not just "you *may* walk here", but additionally "you *can* walk here without getting stuck on impassable ground".

[RJH]

On my street at least, keep leaves, litter and toileting dogs out of the front garden.

[Bruce Farquhar]

You need to move.

[Tim Watts]

Keep the dog in?

[Bruce Farquhar]

Train the dog instead?

[DerbyBorn]

But do the planners try to accept that people like to park out front? No!

[Bruce Farquhar]

I don't understand this parking at the back nonsense. Is this council estates we're talking about? They mostly seem to have been built before the car was invented. They have stupid systems where everyone parks in the middle of a square of houses, but the front doors are on the outside. So a postman walks round the outside to post through the letterboxes on the front doors, which are on a path. But if a courier wants to deliver something, he either has to run 200 yards round the outside of the block from where he parked, or go through their private back garden and knock on the back door, shocking the naked woman who just got out of the shower.

In civilised places like my street, you access the house from the front, where the road is, where the front door with the letterbox is, where the driveway is. The back garden does not have an exit, it borders onto the back garden of the house in the next street, with a fence or hedge to seperate them. Cars do not park on the road apart from buses/taxis/postmen. Your own car lives in your drive or garage where it belongs.

[Bruce Farquhar]

Why don't you have a guide dog? If I was blind there's no way I'd venture outside without assistance. There's only so much that your hearing and a white stick can tell you about your surroundings. How do you avoid stepping in dog shit for example? And I wonder if guide dogs steer the blind around that?

[Bruce Farquhar]

Buses are the root cause of most annoyances on the road. They're too slow and too big.

[Steve Walker]

Ours is somewhat like that, but my wife's car lives on the road outside. The driveway is only long enough for one car and access along the side of the house, while useable for my kit-car or trailer, is too narrow for everyday use - involving inching though with mirrors folded!

We are lucky, many houses only have access 3' to 4' wide to the back garden. The houses were built in 1934/35 and cars weren't a consideration.

SteveW

[Bruce Farquhar]

I would never have bought a house like that. I like my cars on my own property. My drive holds 5, plus 1 in the garage (if I hadn't converted it). I've only ever owned up to 3 cars at once. Owning a car without space to put it is like buying a computer motherboard with no case to hold it in and just leaving it running on the floor.

[Dave Liquorice]

Or the sheep/cattle out when they are being moved along the road.

[Muddymike]

Mine are to keep the dog safely on our property.

Mike

[spuorgelgoog]

common grazings is posh.

cooncil playpark and the sewage works is not posh.

Owain

[S Viemeister]

Yes.

[S Viemeister]

Pretty, but not posh.

Definitely not posh.

[Steve Walker]

If you want to live in the area, that's generally what you get unless you are very well off. Anyway, when I bought the house, I was single and my only plans for a second vehicle were for a motorbike.

SteveW

[Bruce Farquhar]

Then don't live in that area, it's obviously shit. It's akin to buying something very expensive from Harrods instead of going to Aldi.

There's nothing worse than a lack of forward planning - Microsoft etc do it all the time. Oh we'll never need more than 640K of RAM....