How to Tell If You Are Allowed

The problem, stated plainly

A sign that says no is easy. A sign that says yes is easy. Neither is common.

What is common is a gate standing open in a wall, with a name on it and nothing else, and a visitor standing in front of it doing arithmetic. That visitor almost always walks away, and about eight times in ten they were welcome.

This page is an attempt to shorten that calculation to about ten seconds.

Four things, in order

1. The surface

The single most reliable signal on any ground of this kind.

Surfaces made for people look made for people: brick, flag, crushed stone raked level, asphalt with a curb and a width that suits two abreast. Surfaces made for work look like work: graded gravel wide enough for a truck, concrete with a drain in the middle, mud with tire ruts.

Where the surface stops being made for you, you have arrived at the edge of what was open. This holds on campuses, in gardens, around institutions and on farms, and we have not yet found ground where it fails.

2. The hinge

Look at the gate, then look at the hinge.

A gate that is open because somebody opened it this morning has a clean hinge and a keeper set in the ground. A gate that has been open for eleven years has a hinge in the same condition as the wall. The second kind is not a decision anybody makes daily and you are not interrupting it.

A chain looped but not fastened is the third case and it means shut, whatever it looks like from twenty feet.

3. The mowing line

Where a mower goes, people are expected.

Ground mown to the edge of a path and then left rough is telling you exactly where the intended walking is. Ground mown as a lawn to the last inch is being protected and is often the one part of an open place you should keep off. Ground not mown at all, with a path worn through it, is being used by people and tolerated by whoever owns it, which is its own kind of permission.

4. Somebody else

Worth more than the other three together.

One person crossing with a coffee, one dog being walked, one bicycle leaned against a wall. Ground that is genuinely off limits is empty of casual people, and casual people are very good at knowing where they may be.

What is not a signal

• A name carved over an entrance. It says who owns it, not who may enter.
• A grand entrance. Institutions build those for themselves.
• An empty car park. See the fairground: empty often means shut.
• A website. Out of date more often than the gate is.

When you get it wrong

Somebody asks what you are looking for.

That is the whole penalty, in every case we have had in three years of doing this. The answer is the true one, said plainly, and it ends the conversation. Nobody has ever been anything other than polite about it, and twice we have been given a better direction than the one we were walking in.

Being asked to leave means leaving, immediately and without discussion, and it does not mean you did something wrong. It means the arrangement was not what you thought it was.