php include to files outside GS doesn't work inside theme

[charles_i]

I'm using GS for only certain areas of my site. I want to include my nav bar and my footer from the site's root inside a theme page but I can't get it to work.

So my site is at (say) mysite.org and my GS pages are in mysite.org/getsimple/theme/mytheme.

Now when I create my theme page I want to link the nav and footer to my main site files which are here:

mysite.org/footer.php
mysite.org/nav.php

but this won't work.

This is correct - but it doesn't work:

<?PHP include ('../../../footer.php'); ?>

All of these return the correct path:

$myfooter = "mysite.org/footer.php";
$myfooter = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/footer.php';
$myfooter = "http://'.parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST) . '/footer.php'";

but none of them work inside the include.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Charles