I live on a smallholding-type place which has two drives. It’s really useful to have both of them as sometimes the one I usually use (Drive B) is blocked so I use the main drive (Drive A). Also visitors often use Drive A.
A few years ago I sold a piece of land to someone who uses it to graze their horses. As part of the sale I gave the owner right-of-way access over Drive A. The drive goes over quite a chunk of my garden. The person I sold it to has a groom who goes to look after the horses every day.
Before Lockdown it seems that the groom (and anyone else who was with her) would park more-or-less wherever they wanted to along Drive A, which I didn’t know about as I was out at work. Being the easy-going type, I don’t really care about this as it didn’t affect me. They’d usually park on this little section just off the drive (ie in my front garden) and walk the rest of the way to their land, or they’d leave their cars blocking the entire drive which worked out ok as no one else was using it because people coming to the house use Drive B.
Since Lockdown this has become a bit annoying as I am here all the time and trying to enjoy my garden with a bit of privacy. It started to come to a head a few weeks ago when DP tried to go out via Drive A and found that the groom had parked her car blocking the way and he couldn’t get out. When he asked her to move she huffed and said “well there IS another drive you can use, you know”.
Last week I was having friends over and for various reasons they needed to use Drive A. I called the groom and said ‘I know you’re used to parking there and up till now it’s been ok, but from now on when you’re going to your land you need to actually park ON your land and not in my garden as I don’t want the drive blocked and also I don’t want cars parked in the garden anymore’. She said this was fine and that she was leaving in the next two weeks anyway as she’d got another job. All good.
The next day I went up there and found not one but TWO cars parked on the bit I’d just asked her to keep clear. It was her and her friend who had gone out for a ride.
I just asked DP to help me put some logs and stuff to block the bit where she parks so that a) she can’t park there anymore and b) the next groom doesn’t get the same idea. DP, however, wants to call her boss who owns the land to complain. I don’t think it’s worth calling anyway as she’ll be gone in the next couple of weeks. I figure I’ve asked nicely, she’s not paying attention, so I’ll physically block off the part where she parks. DP however thinks she might just end up leaving her car in the middle of the drive instead.
AIBU to just quietly block off the bit where she parks, or would you call her boss and make more of a fuss?
(Diagram to follow...)