I am not sure what to do and would be very grateful of some advise.
I recently moved into our dream townhouse in London that is in the middle of two semi townhouses. The town house to our left was up for sale and empty.
The neighbour (Gary) was parking on our drive as the house had been empty and putting his bins and motorbike on our land, its a funny set up as our land and parking are at the side of his house and he has never fenced it. They never came over or said hello.
When we moved in he moved his cars, but left his bins on the land but we never bumped into him expecting him to move them, weeks went by and he didn't move them and then when I walked past his wife one day she ignored me.
We walk up a path to a tiny garden, this leads to a main road that takes you to a road that leads to the shops. The neigbour kept walking through our garden as if it was his own and through our gate, we let this go as we don't like confrontation.
However every time this happened we got more wound up until one day he walked through with a glass of wine in his hand from visiting a neighbour at night when his back gate backs onto the neighbours house.
So the next day we asked him why he was using the gate and he said he had always used it and the neighbour who lived at our house before was his mate, everyone uses it he said although we had never seen anyone but his family go through.
He then said he had a right of way and even knew the clause number and document. we were shocked as we had bought it as having a private garden. so we let him go through again without stopping him until we had double checked everything with our solicitor.
During this time the neighbour from being really unfriendly started to be very friendly even inviting us round for drinks, but we turned him down as we were already going out that night.
We then found out that there was no right of way and the previous seller had put that there was no right of way. so we put up cameras and a lock on a new gate with intercom. From that point he ignores us and walks away when we go past his gate to get to our cars. His wife also snubs us.
Fast forward a few months later another neighbour has moved into the town house on our other side. Now the reaction of Gary could not have been more different, he was over straight away, and now they are literally best buddies, I have never seen such a friendship develop so quickly, its like they are in love., its a bit strange to be honest its like he was desperate to be this guys best friend from day one helping him renovate his house.
Now we held back as we don't like to push ourselves on people and are very quite people, however when we first bumped into these new neighbours they were for no reason very off with us, and I can only think that gary has been calling us to them as they don't even know us. Now they both very loud on either side of us and we feel like we are the enemy of them both.
We are very upset about this as we feel we have done nothing wrong and that all we did was claim a right to our own garden being private.
As a side note when I had my first chat with Gary he also slagged off a couple of neighbours.
We love the house and wanted to stay long term but my mother has advised me to sell up - any ideas please?