My neighbor decided our shared driveway was actually just his driveway and documented the whole thing by accident

i live in a semi-detached house, built in the 1970s, and the property has a shared driveway running along the side that both houses have legal access to. This is in the deeds, it was explained to me when I bought the place, it's not ambiguous. My neighbor on that side is a man I'll call Gerald who has lived there for about fifteen years and who, I think, had simply gotten used to having the driveway mostly to himself because the previous owner barely drove.

About four months after I moved in Gerald put up a chain across the driveway entrance with a padlock. Not across his half. Across the whole entrance. He left a note on my door saying he was "securing the property" and that I could knock if I needed access. I knocked. He seemed genuinely surprised that I had a problem with this and explained that he had been "maintaining" the driveway for years and felt he had more of a claim to it. I told him about the deeds. He said deeds were complicated. I took photos of the chain, the padlock, and the note and sent a letter through a solicitor referencing the specific easement language from my title documents. Gerald removed the chain within 48 hours and has not spoken to me directly since, which I consider an acceptable outcome. What I did not expect is that Gerald apparently complained about this to several neighbors, which I know because three separate people on my street have approached me over the past few months to tell me what he said, and in doing so have told me things about Gerald's general behaviour that suggest this driveway situation was not his first attempt at this kind of thing. The neighborhood has been very informatve.