Did you ever go 'Garden Creeping' when you were younger?

[HelloVeritas]

The challenge was to start at one end of a street of terraced houses after dark, and work your way down the entire street via the back gardens.

So a gang of you would have to carefully climb over each garden fence to gain access to the next garden and so on until you reached the end.

Rules were:

If there was a slide, everyone had to go down it

Ditto garden swings

And horrified at this memory if there was a rabbit hutch, you had to 'set them free'

I suppose we were late primary/early secondary age and to best of my knowledge I don't think we ever got caught.

Was this just a thing where I grew up, or did others do similar?

Circa mid 80's

We did hedge diving, I don't think there was a particular rule about not getting caught. It was mainly front gardens though.

My cousins lived in a pub that backed onto some allotments. We used to play army which included scaling the back fence of their garden and then crawling commando style through the allotments (via the grass paths mainly) without getting caught to the exit which would take us to the main road back to the front of the house.

We we're considerably older than primary and mostly drunk

Yes called the Grand National!!!!

I'd never even heard of it - the closest we had was trying to get in and touch the back wall of the Disney Store and get back out without an assistant speaking to us. Nothing like the same level of jeopardy.

Feel slightly relieved that other people did this too, though maybe the rabbit thing was a particular feature of our gang? 😬

Never heard of it. I am from
Where Vic was from. Not a Boro thing though by sounds of this thread.

Sounds fun though except the rabbits,that sounds mean.

Think I would have been too much of a whimp to partake though.

I'd completely forgotten how low fences used to be!

But I never did this op, the bunny thing is terrible!

I've never heard of this! We had high fences though and no way in as all the gardens backed onto each other and high walls at either end. Didn't any barking dogs ever give you away?

We used to do it in front gardens. Plus, the burnt out Vet surgery around the corner, that was all boarded up was a favourite haunt of ours as quite young kids, back end of the 70's. I'd be going out of my head if I didn't know where my kids were and yet our parents used to let us go out and told us not to come back till it was dark 🤣. I had the best childhood!

We used to go scrumping, but apart from the releasing of rabbits!, this sounds much more fun! Very tempted to attempt it next time the girls are round, can you imagine people looking at the footage from their ring doorbells in the morning, you'd have to do it in disguise!

Haha @HelloVeritas i read the bob mortimer comment and was about to say I too grew up in the same area (we also didn’t let pets out though) but we would pinch the milk and fresh orange juices off the doorsteps 🤦🏽‍♀️

We did this in Glasgow in the 70s in the tenement back yards. We had a route from one end of the block to the other, part of which involved climbing up onto the roof of the old washhouse and jumping off the other side.

We also did a fair bit of midgie raking (raiding the communal bins for ‘treasure’) and ‘dreeping dykes’ (climbing up a high wall and dangling and dropping off the other side )

Oh happy days!

‘I get your pardon, we’re in your garden ‘

Yes - minor trespassing was like a rite of passage where I grew up , pretty standard 😂Releasing people's pets is awful though. Even most primary aged kids would know that.

Good job you didn't grow up in the rough inner city area in the North I did, you'd have ended up with glass and barbed wire in your knees if you were lucky. And by city, I don't mean where Wor Bob grew up but quite a few miles further north. The rabbits thing is just bizarre, those bunnies must have been fairly scared I'd have thought. Let's hope not too many of them ended up in a fox's tummy.

We did it (not the bunnies though)

Early 80s

Yes! But not releasing rabbits. We also had fun with heavy snow. We would build giant snow men, igloos and have competitions for making the biggest snow balls! Also snow ball fights in the large gardens. Great fun. Only got caught a couple of times. We were about 9 or10.

Laughing at all the bunnies being released although I hope they weren’t eaten by foxes!!
you wouldn’t make it without flood lights and ring cameras catching you these days. Sounds like it was fun especially everyone going down the slide!

We did but through hedges! No bunnies were harmed by me..

My cousins lived in a pub that backed onto some allotments. We used to play army which included scaling the back fence of their garden and then crawling commando style through the allotments (via the grass paths mainly) without getting caught to the exit which would take us to the main road back to the front of the house.

Yes I remember going commando style across all the gardens! 😆

As teenagers after the pub yes. Was an expert at scaling 6ft fences after several pints of snakebite. Once did it carrying a large stolen stone peacock (which I returned albeit to the wrong garden, right street so it got home in the end) but we never let any pets out.

No, I've never heard of this!

Although I don't remember being personally involved in any kind of bunny release, I apologise unreservedly to anyone whose bunny 'wandered off' in the North East circa early to mid 80's 🙄

Never did this or heard of it but I wish we had, it would’ve been a laugh. Used to run into peoples gardens for Chappy but that was it. If we kicked a ball into a garden we all hid before someone came out threatening us with the The Wooden Spoon.

We did. I dread to think of the damage we caused. But we didn't set any pets free.