The holidaymakers next door

[mindutopia]

Just a rant really, I know I’m not being at all unreasonable. We live in a very rural area that is somewhere people like to visit. It’s pretty and remote and lovely. The only house within about a mile or more is a holiday let. Owners are lovely and actually bought the property back that their grandparents used to own 60 years ago. We have no issues with them. We also have no issues with 95% of their guests. They are usually very quiet and respectful and all that.

We had a family arrive yesterday for the week, with a 5 & 10 year old (we have a 4 & 9 year old, so great we thought!). They came over to play yesterday afternoon, fine.

I woke up this morning to their 5 year old in our lounge (we have like 5 doors, it’s a big old farmhouse, we don’t lock them usually at night as literally no one bothers us down here). I returned him to his family.

They attempted to come over several times today but I sent them back as we were having an Easter egg hunt in the garden and also having lunch. They finally came over again in the afternoon (I was in the house tidying up after lunch). We live on a farm so I can’t really see much from the kitchen, or else if I’d seen them, I would have intervened.

The 5 year old got into our chicken pen, let all the chickens out, threw about £5 worth of food and grit everywhere, and then appeared in my lounge (I was tidying up toys) and chucked 4 eggs on the floor (thankfully didn’t break!). I’m over it.

I only discovered the chickens let out (for foxes to eat) and food thrown everywhere just now as I went to tidy up outside for the evening. I went to knock on holiday let’s door but was dark inside downstairs and I could hear kids in bathroom upstairs so they are obviously doing bath and bedtime now.

I’ll speak with them tomorrow, but I just needed to rant. We’ve had so many people traveling to our lovely part of the country the past couple years and it does provide income for many local people (not Dh and I, we work in careers totally unrelated to tourism). But these are the first CF we’ve had in a long time and it just irritates me. Every time I’ve returned their children to them, they’ve just been in the kitchen, drinking, and oblivious. We had a bonfire burning today. We have a river with deep fast flowing water. We also had our puppy out this afternoon, who is lovely but very big and jumpy, which is why we are careful to only have her off lead on our own farm. She definitely could have injured one on these kids in excitement if we hadn’t known they were wondering around our land. And also just the damage and expense to our livestock. I’ve had to clean out the duck and chicken houses because they filled them with pellets and they can choke without access to water. They’re here 5 more days! I will go have a word in the morning, but in the meantime, just arghhhh!

@SillySallySassySausage Actually no, but have you been drinking?! No, we live in a lovely part of Devon where there is likely one violent crime a month in the whole part of the county. People do come round to steal sheep or tractors or generators. But literally my family and dh’s family have lived in this part of Devon since the 1920s.

No, we live a mile plus from nearest neighbour (except for holiday let about 1/4 mile down the track past our house). I don’t lock the doors when I go out in the garden or to take the dog for a walk in daylight hours while 3 family members are literally at home inside the house. No one does that here. 😂

I’ve lived and worked all over the world. I’ve lived in very high risk places (as per the Home Office), I’ve been robbed at knife point, I’ve been stalked, I’ve lived in places where my colleagues and I couldn’t even go outside to have a wee at night because of the risk of gang violence and kidnapping of westerners.

I don’t live that sort of life in rural Devon. 😂 I am totally happy to leave my doors unlocked while I’m out in the garden. Or, for example, in the afternoon, I’d been in the lounge tidying up and then laid down on the sofa for a nap. Dh had taken the dc and dog for a walk.

The children from next door had gone into our farmyard unsupervised. Opened the poultry house, crawled in (through all the 💩 😬), got out eggs, then come into our house and I woke up to the 5 year old chucking the eggs around the floor of the lounge. I shoved him back out the door as my dc appeared from the walk and asked them to take him home. Yes, could totally have gone over and shouted at that stage. But dc/Dh/dog had left on a walk about an hour earlier. It had not occurred to me I should keep on the look out for random children in my house, while I was having a nap! I mean, that isn’t usually a thing, is it?

That said, holiday let owner s sound pretty angry so hopefully it’s sorted. Thanks for letting me rant.

I dont think the person means you are to lock your family in when your outside in your garden & I think you know that. I think the point is that you must not lock your doors at night when you are all sleeping if you have found a child in your home at 8am in the morning - when you wrote that you stated it was because you don't lock your doors.

I agree, I think its irresponsible to not lock your doors at night when the whole house is asleep especially when you have children there. I really hope yous aren't burgled or worse at night one night. For all it takes to lock your doors & keep your family & your children safe.

Personally I would never sleep in an unlocked house, bloody hell thats crazy.

@SillySallySassySausage

Got as far as We don't lock our doors … nope, what do you expect. Be thankful that it was just a small, harmless child you found in your house If this is actually for realz

We live in a house in the Midlands. Our doors are rarely locked during the day - although always at night.

@Greyarea12 But it wasn’t at night when the whole house was asleep! We have CCTV and security lights as we have a business on site. All barns are locked up at night, but I can’t literally lock the livestock pens or fields because animals need to come out to eat during the day.

I’d gone out to walk the dog, leaving the house unlocked, while the rest of the family was inside. Surely, that’s normal. I have literally never known anyone around here who locks their doors during the day while they are home inside the house. That may be the norm somewhere, but definitely not here. Anyway, even still I’d supervise my dc if I thought they might be somewhere random (outside the confines of my holiday let garden - fwiw holiday let comes with 28 acres of grounds and woodland, very clearly demarcated behind a hedge/fence). They actually have more land/room to wander than we do, but most of it isn’t a working farm.

[quote mindutopia]@Greyarea12 But it wasn’t at night when the whole house was asleep! We have CCTV and security lights as we have a business on site. All barns are locked up at night, but I can’t literally lock the livestock pens or fields because animals need to come out to eat during the day.

I’d gone out to walk the dog, leaving the house unlocked, while the rest of the family was inside. Surely, that’s normal. I have literally never known anyone around here who locks their doors during the day while they are home inside the house. That may be the norm somewhere, but definitely not here. Anyway, even still I’d supervise my dc if I thought they might be somewhere random (outside the confines of my holiday let garden - fwiw holiday let comes with 28 acres of grounds and woodland, very clearly demarcated behind a hedge/fence). They actually have more land/room to wander than we do, but most of it isn’t a working farm.[/quote]
You seem to be purposely missing the point & that being that you don't lock your doors during the night when your all alseep.

No wonder you hear about rural crime rocketing if you are all merrily leaving your houses unlocked! I grew up in a rural village we were always getting burgled as dark in the country side and no police.

OP this situation aside, are the doors not all locked when you're all in bed asleep at night? Genuinely curious!

But fwiw literally no one locks their doors here at night. We do generally lock most of them, but no one could come in without the dog obviously noticing, and no one would want to meet our large breed dog in the night. But anyway I don’t lock my doors when I’m awake anyway as I was both times when 5 year old appeared, once at 8am and once at 4pm. First time I was walking the dog and came back to Dh waking up and asking me why this random child was in our lounge. Second time, everyone else was out and I was having a nap, and awoke to child in my lounge throwing eggs from my chickens around.

Nothing could prevent that but good ole fashioned parenting. 🤷🏻‍♀️ My livestock are all in barns, which aren’t easy to access if you are trying to drive your lorry in to steal them. But won’t keep our children who climb over gates unsupervised, if they wander down the lane. It’s literally never been an issue. Most holidaymakers are super respectful, happy to learn about keeping animals, concerned another dc’s safety, and also really communicative. It’s lovely to have people over, but we aren’t a children’s farm and 99% of people get that.

The family in the Airbnb have probably given this entire situation about 13 seconds thought. People are like this. There’s no accounting for the erm… social blindness of a fair proportion of society.

Just chalk it up to stats - you’ve finally pulled the short straw - and know they’ll be gone in a few days.

What on earth is wrong with the posters determined to make this @mindutopia fault?!

If she had locked her doors then the DC would have spent longer trashing the hen house and potentially got themselves in greater danger. Had that happened I’m sure the same moaners would have been blaming OP for being inhospitable

I sympathise with you OP re the lack of boundaries with the holidaymakers' DC, however, I can't imagine ever leaving property unlocked either when I'm in or out of my house.
I would never even leave the patio doors open/ unlocked even when just nipping to the loo. Its not a city thing, it's a security conscious thing; your insurance would be invalid for starters if the worst happened.

It's completely unacceptable that you had this child rampaging through your hen house, turning up in your living room, etc.The parents seem to have taken a holiday from parenting.

No, we don’t lock our doors at night. We live in a very remote area. In all our 40+ years of living around here, we’ve never once had any issues with rural crime. Our families have literally lived here for centuries, no issues.

But no one came into our house during the night to steal anything. 😂 The only time anyone entered our house was during the day while we were inside the house. Does everyone lock up their house when they are literally inside the lounge? We definitely don’t do that here. No one locks their doors unless they are away overnight or out for the day.

I guess it’s just the issue is not that someone tried to steal our jewels at night while we were asleep. It’s that a child who should have been supervised by his parents appeared on our property. I mean, yes, he did appear twice in our lounge, but he also appeared 4 times in our yard/livestock pens. He could have fallen into the bonfire or the 3 ft deep river or drank any of the pesticides in our barns. All behind closed gates, far from any public access.

That’s not okay. It’s not safe. I wouldn’t let my dc of the same age wander randomly like that.

Contacting the owners of the house was the right thing to do.

Forgot to ask, when you returned the wandering children the first time, did you tell the adults that children shouldn’t be unsupervised outside of their Airbnb property, as they are surrounded by working farms?

Common sense isn’t a given in some parents and maybe they just needed to be explicitly told. If you did, and the kids kept showing up alone, then they’re not only stupid parents but also rude ones.

@Blackbird2020 I didn’t actually say they shouldn’t just randomly appear. Because we’d invited them over for a playdate (as we do with dc’s friends and children who stay in the holiday let). They were no trouble. Played outside in the garden for an hour or two as children do on a playdate. I took them back yesterday at dinner time, said thanks for coming for a play, enjoy your holiday. There was no open invitation or implication they could return. I didn’t see any adults today when I somewhat shoutily asked them to go home, but I didn’t discover any of the damage done until 7-8pm and they were already upstairs when I went over.

I don’t think that an initial invite implies 😬 they are welcome back unsupervised forever more. I mean, Dh and I are around at the moment due to the bank holiday weekend. But come Tuesday I’ll be in my office in meetings all day and Dh will be away at work. Dc are in holiday club. I can’t be out roaming the farm hoping they don’t make an appearance when their parents get bored of supervising them. I’m quite an angry shouty person so actually it’s hard to check myself in this situation. I would have gone banging on the door at all hours, but dh would have been embarrassed forever about me being so shouty. 😂 He’d much rather just give the kid some breakfast and pretend it never happened, and then invite them back for more breakfast tomorrow!

Hedges, fences, electric gates etc? Don't encourage them. A 5 year old will wander if bored and if they can.

I love how this has veered into an argument about door locking.

You do lock the door overnight though?

I’ll ignore the Chester dig (if it was a dig?) I am not a Mcwag either

I would invoice them for the wasted feed and eggs. It’s awful and so dangerous that the poor child was alone. I mean what if you were not so safe to be around? Anything could have happened to him. Then to be cheeky enough to open an animal pen and go inside means they are usually not parented to the highest standards surely…

What did you do / say when constantly returning their children? What did they respond?

I took them back yesterday at dinner time, said thanks for coming for a play, enjoy your holiday

Look, I absolutely agree with you that what happened with the kid showing up at 8am and the hen house situation was not on, but you can maybe see why it sort of ended up with the kids back at your place unsupervised?

They came over unsupervised, played with your children, and you took them back with no mention of the issue that kids cannot be sent over unsupervised due to farm machinery, animals etc.

Also a point about ‘rural crime’ anyway, it’s not breaking into houses in rural areas and stealing stuff. That’s such a townie understanding of rural crime.

It’s stealing trailers and tractors and generators and livestock (which are all secured as much as they can be). Literally no one is interested in anything in our house, no one breaks into houses around here, certainly not during the day. It’s all generators and sheep. And ours are as secure as they ever could be.

But I’ve lived places in the world where I needed to have an escort/security just to get from home to the office and back. We live in an otherwise safe area, I won’t treat it like it’s Afghanistan just because we might sometimes have some nosey neighbours. It’s annoying (and why I had a rant about the CF), but no need to change our lifestyle and lock all the doors every night or the second I go in the garden. Literally no one could enter our house anyway as we have quite a loud, large breed dog. She would raise a ruckus and pin them to the ground licking their faces.

We had a chat with them yesterday afternoon, said happy for them to come over to play in the garden
Unless you said “today” or “when I invite them”, this could have been misconstrued. Although, if the 5 year old is that unruly and possibly has SEN, I would expect them not to let him wander off on his own in an unknown place.

I don’t lock my doors either OP. Or, only if we are all going out for the day.

It seems odd to lock the doors if you are in the house. You lock the doors when you are going away.

And I agree about rural crime. Around here there were a couple of quad bikes taken, and apparently they tried to take some horses a few miles away, but I haven’t ever heard of any burglaries.

I’m missing the point here but I have NO idea how you manage to sleep knowing your doors are unlocked

YANBU and if you don't usually lock doors then you shouldn't need to just in case someone on holiday can't look after their DC properly.

The damage to the chicken coop is out of order. It sounds like the parents just want to sit and drink and relax while the kids roam around.