To be irritated at people walking across our lawn? (Yes, there's a diagram)

[EduCated]

Diagram attached.

The main culprits are house B, but others in that terrace do it too. The footpath to the end of the row (5 houses) is a dead end, and is higher than the car park below, so they have to come down the footpath and steps.

The path between us and B and the steps are owned by the council, as is the grass next to the car park.

The rest of the gardens in our terrace are all landscaped and have their steps integral to the garden. Ours is the only one to be a lawn, and the slope is relatively steep. The lawn isn't in the best state, but we keep it mowed and try our best. Neighbours have seen us out mowing it.

However some of our neighbours seem to use our lawn rather than the steps, yomping straight across the middle. This morning B was stood in the middle of our lawn faffing with her bike Others have stood and had conversations in the middle, or lugged all their shopping up and down.

To be honest, I wouldn't really mind if it was the occasional nip across, or if they looked a bit sheepish doing it. There's an old chap in about house D who knocked our door to say that he sometimes used our lawn as he finds the steps too much and he was very sorry and was it ok - have absolutely no issues with this whatsoever.

Had I not been feeling hungover under the weather I would have poked my head out this morning, but AIBU to find this irritating?! Is it not obvious that this is our lawn?

It might be worth creating a small flower bed in the middle of the lawn. At the moment people may see it as just a patch of grass to be walked over, if you do a flower bed then it turns the grass into s garden.

Turn it into an obstacle course. Jump over the flower garden go around the lawn bench, watch out for sprinklers... and so on. Then they will get more exercise than the footpath

Superb quality diagram, that

Hedging maybe? If you buy it young, it's not expensive. The LL might agree to protect his lawn. Mixed native species would be pretty and thorny.

Oo - you could set up a hopskotch path, with large spacing between the squares. AND have a "marks out of 10" system. Of course the elderly gent isn't going to score very highly, but never mind.

I recommend berberis, pyracantha (also known as firethorn), holly and dog roses. You can get these cheaply from Morrison's or a local market and they grow pretty much anywhere.
You don't need to go all the way round, just enough to block off the path.

My next door neighbour had this problem (not from us!). They bought some edging from Aldi, really cheap but nice. It works.