I wasn't speaking of distance but accessibility. If that was the other half of my garden I'd want a gate; it's a bit of a scramble to get in and out.
In my hubbies garden there were two gates, one on either side of the pathway which others walked along. This was a quite common set up in Victorian times.
His garden was quite small, of course, but there are gardens on steep slopes that are rather like the path that the Mccanns had to take. Because these are too steep to walk straight up, the path meanders from side to side, like the Zig zag paths on the cliffs at Bournemouth. People having these gardens are in a somewhat similar position to how The Mccanns were. They could be 50 metres Crow flies, but very much more walking distance.
We have friends with a cliff house in Carbis Bay, their garden is like that.. We were also invited to a friends house (on IIRC Mount Royal in Montreal). The Canadian house whilst looking quite big at the front, was actually huge becos to the rear, it kept going down another floor as the mountain dropped. Behind both was an extremely steep garden in terraces, with a zigzag path up.
Thousands of people have gardens like these where one cant walk as the crow flies back to the homestead.
I repeat Gerry and Kate were in what amounted to being their back garden. They were approx 50 metres away crow flies and less than 80 metres walking / running distance.
