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

Yes, night creeping in our pyjamas when me & my cousins were 10, 11,12. No pet liberations, ours was more juvenile theft, we stole peaches, flowers and had a strange fascination with a factory we found that made sports bags and stuff. We broke into it a couple of times & stole bags & tshirts.

Never heard of it, but it’s made me picture Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead stomping up the steps to the slide and saying “lots” and also failing to vault over a fence between gardens!

Releasing animals - not cool.

Here’s bob mortimers hilarious story of theft and shrubbery…

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 🙄

My rabbit did escape! I am not in the NE was this a national part of the game? I believed my dad when he said my rabbit must have pushed the door open.

I never did it - too law abiding as a child - but I've added a poem which will have particular relevance to anyone Scottish.

No. Didn't do this.

The rabbits part is horrible. Our guinea pigs were attacked by a cat very quickly when we didn't realize their run wasn't quite closed. It was not a pleasant experience and one poor piggy had a prolonged death from shock

I don't know why you're eye rolling. It was a really shitty thing to do.

How old were people when they were doing this?

Did your parents not realise you'd left the house, in the dark, in your pyjamas?

Oh this is brilliant! We didn’t hop through people’s gardens !
The freedom of children in the 70’s and 80’s! So sad it has been lost!

We did something similar- we didn’t need to hop over fences though as they were all joined at the back with a hedge in front, so if you squeezed between the hedge and the fence you could go all through the cul de sac and only have to climb over a couple of joists.

@Bluecirclesquare No never surprisingly, they must have slept like logs! It usually occurred in the summer hols when staying at each other's homes. I think we were hyper and excited. We'd wait until around 3 am and off we went, sneaking out. It started off low level as creeping round the block then escalated.

Yep always did this . Loved being an 80s kid . We also used to change everyone's garden pots and contents into different gardens . Never touched anyone's pets .
Happy days 🙂

Wow that's quite brave!

Never heard of this.. What have I missed?

It was called "As the Crow Flies" and the next day was spent returning garden bits and bobs picked up on the previous night"s journey. It was harder in London but scaffolding and crossing a roof or two helped with routes blocked by buildings. Quite lucky to be alive and without criminal record now I think of It.

My brother told me about going garden hopping in his teens and how dares had included swapping a couple of items over on neighbour’s washing lines, picking some flowers and leaving them in a milk bottle (filled from garden tap) on another neighbour’s step (awww) and finally taking off (!) and swapping over gates at two neighbouring houses 😂
No releasing of bunnies though 😠