Thank you all for such quick responses. I’ve been out doing a lot of motor mowing and now find your messages.
Maybe I should explain further my situation. I have a good relationship with this couple because we are cat lovers. They have 5 cats and I have 10. My workshop, which has a large garden behind it, is where for a number of years I ran a cat association, taking in abandoned kittens, looking after injured cats and catching, neutering and releasing semi-wild and wild cats.
Because of this I have given him a key to my workshop because he said he would like to help with looking after any cats that may be in cages temporarily while they are getting better….and so on. I believed him
But he then started leaving for example a garden tool, a pickaxe or a pair of secateurs there without saying anything. I waited and later there were other things that belonged to him left without saying anything. This went on until I found one day he had parked his motor scooter there, again without saying anything. When I saw the scooter I immediately turfed everything he had left in my workshop with a great sense of anger. I considered this to have been an insidious and purposeful encroachment over time, taking advantage of my good nature.
Since then he has apologised and he continues to use the key to regularly fill the water bowl and food bowls for the semi wild cats that come and go using my workshop for food, water and somewhere to be in the winter.
But now I find he has stored wood burning logs in the garden behind my workshop and has started growing vegetables as well! He also has started leaving his scooter there as well again.
I’m not a confrontational sort of person and don’t want there to be a war! I much prefer cordial neighbourly relations. However I will have NO problem telling him to get lost!!! That’s not a problem.
His latest ploy was to ask if he could park his car on a different place on my land because he said birds keep pooping on his car. I told him it would make no difference – the new place he pointed out was still under a tree. He said that would be ok. This seemed so lame an excuse that I suspected he is being manipulative again.
He knows a lot about property law and it dawned on me that maybe in French law he would gain some sort of property rights over a period of years.
If property law doesn’t act in this way and he cannot gain rights over my land he can stay where he has been parking. His wife, who I believe owns the car and the house, is not a problem. She has had breast cancer recently, has regained her health and I have no problems with her. It’s the insidious, silent and controlling nature of her husband that is bothering me.