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Depends how much I liked the neighbour and whether or not I was happy letting them have access. In your case, I don't think you're being unreasonable at all. You've provided the terms on which you're prepared to give access (which don't themselves seem unreasonable) and she's gone off in a huff. At the end of the day, getting access to her property is her problem, not yours. You've offered to help resolve it, and she's grumpy because she'd assumed she could just do whatever she wanted traipsing over your garden with all and sundry. Well, screw that.
Brommers
I live in an end terrace in the middle of the street giving rear access. Our none adjoining neighbours have right of way down the alley and a gate into their garden. Our joining neighbours don't. They (joining) recently had a tree cut back (at our request) and used the ally to remove the branches. All fine. Sat morning I got a text saying "...Just want to check that you're happy for us to use your garden and path as access (for 1 week to get the garden re done starting Monday)". The text was pretty presumptuous.
Any workmen would have to come and go across our garden for the week while we are out at work. No real details were given. We didn’t return the text as we weren’t sure how we wanted to reply and were pretty busy. Neighbour doorstepped us (whilst in our dressing gowns) on Sunday for a reply which was; no they can’t have unrestricted access with no details of what will be happening. This went badly with comments such as “you let us have it when it benefited you, but now it’s of no benefit to won’t allow it” (a ref to the tree surgery which took 1 day), “well how are we meant to do it now, we can’t get a shed through the house” and lots of sighing and shoulder shrugging. I offered the compromise that they we could allow things that can’t go through the house to come down the alley but not the alley as an access point is she can work out the details. During the conversation she didn’t acknowledge this as a compromise but carried on with the emotive hard sell. She hasn’t come back to me any compromise or details so I can only assume that she taken it badly and given it up. By her overall actions I’d guess finding us unreasonable.
I don’t really want to restrict access to them but I don’t want to give someone unrestricted access for reasons of injury liability, security, potential of damage, not knowing the volume of workmen/work, potential to overrun, but also because she has been so presumptuous and went straight for the hard sell using emotional blackmail trying to turn it around in 48 hours with no details.
My question is: looking past the obvious bias in my write up, am I being unreasonable? How much access would you give a neighbour?