July expenses, not a bad month...

At the end of last month, I had said that our planned budget for the month of July was $2,045 CAD ($1,545 USD). While we came in at $2,823 CAD ($2,134 USD), the extra was all related to my laser eye surgery treatment.

So without the cost of the treatment, we were pretty much on budget, although some of the categories were a bit out of whack . Here's how it all broke down...

Fun getting caught up with everyone

Ruth's mom and dad came to Canada from England in 1957, but Ruth and her siblings were born in Canada. So all of their aunts and uncles and cousins were across the pond in England, and they only saw them once every five years or so while growing up. Ruth and her cousin Helen were about the same age, so they formed a bond over the years.

When Ruth and I first met in March of 1983, she already had a trip planned to visit England on her own in September of that year.

Interesting day trip to Shaftesbury

We got into the car with Helen and Tony and headed west for a day trip to Salisbury. Ruth and I had been there before, but it was many years ago. Salisbury has a really nice cathedral. Anyhow, while we were driving along, I looked up the cathedral and saw that it is now a £9 ($15.25 CAD, $11.50 USD) fee per adult to enter the cathedral. 

Between that and the heavy traffic, we decided on a change of plans and instead made our way to the closer town of Shaftesbury.

Max is still for sale

We've had a couple of expressions of interest, but nobody who wants to make a commitment. I haven't really made an effort to advertise him much other than writing the motorhome for sale blog post and copying it to a couple of facebook groups.

We would have preferred to sell him to a foreign buyer who would continue to use him the way we have. Such an easy way for someone from Canada or U.S. or Australia, (or wherever!) to get into a European motorhome and be able to turn the key and head off right away. So I'm kind of surprised someone hasn't jumped at the idea.

Quick visit to the capital city of Cardiff, Wales

We stopped in the town of Cross Hands for some groceries, then headed southeast towards the city of Cardiff. The two lane highway turned into a four lane highway, then into the M4 motorway where traffic was fairly heavy going into the city of Cardiff (pop 400,000).

Not easy to find decent free parking around Cardiff, but we ended up parking at the big IKEA store and doing the half hour walk into the central area.

What a difference a day makes!

Unfortunately, the beautiful weather from the day before didn't carry over into a second day.

With heavy rain forecast to begin around 11:00am, we got up at 6:30am and drove right away to another trailhead parking spot a little further on to access a different section of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Trail. 

Easier than we expected to get decent free overnight spots in the middle of summer holidays.

With an absolutely gorgeous day ahead of us, we got on the road early and drove to what turned out to be one of the best overnight spots ever, with a beautiful view of Dinas Head and the village of Dinas Cross.

We arrived up there and were surprised to find we had the place to ourselves. It's actually been easier than we expected to get decent free overnight spots in the middle of summer holidays.

Taking advantage of the blue sky and sunshine!

We said goodbye to Ruth, Chris, and Tigs the dog just before 10:00am, and hit the road heading northwest towards the coast. The skies were supposed to clear up by lunchtime, so we wanted to get some hiking in.

First stop was near a National Trust property called Llanerchaeron. It's actually closed Mondays and Tuesdays, but you can still walk the many trails around the property.

Heading to Pembrokeshire to do some hiking

We managed to get out with Tigs for a few walks yesterday before his mom and dad came home late in the afternoon. Poor old guy is definitely showing his age though. After we're done walking him, you almost feel like you need to go for another walk to get some exercise yourself. But, he's been no trouble at all to look after. 

The weather was better than forecast though... we were actually out in t-shirts in the afternoon.

Busy few weeks ahead of us!

It was a heavy rain day, especially in the morning. But, we got a bunch of computer stuff done, including filling out all the forms for our Turkmenistan trip in October. Had to answer all the questions on the letter of invitation, send copies of both our passports, and send a digital passport style photo of each of us in order to get the visa.

They want to know about your education, how many children you have, their dates of birth and more. 

Meeting up with Tigs the dog

We headed down through the beautiful Wye River Valley here in Wales. Yesterday was the start of school vacation here in Wales, and we saw a noticeable increase in traffic on the roads. Lots of cars pulling travel trailers as well.

There was supposed to be the occasional bit of blue sky, but we never saw the sun all day. Still, we're finding the temperature of about 18C (66F) to be quite pleasant, especially when going for a hike.

Beautiful view over the Clywedog Reservoir

We woke up hoping to see more fighter jets buzzing overhead, and a single propeller trainer went by early on to give us some optimism. However the clouds and rain moved in shortly afterwards, and we had read that the jets don't fly this route unless conditions are good.

So we ended up moving on without seeing any more.

Max's first booboo

We finally had a beautiful day, so we took advantage of it with two different short hikes.

First was a walk up to the castle and the area surrounding the village of Harlech. We didn't go in the castle. We had just spent a bunch of time in a castle a couple of days earlier and reviews said that while Harlech Castle is impressively set up on a hill, the views are the attraction, and the actual interior isn't worth the £8.50 ($14.50 CAD, $11 USD) entry fee despite the fact that we would have saved 50% with our English Heritage card.

If you snooze, you lose...

Yesterday was a rain day. Probably the wettest day we've had for a long time. But, we still managed to get out... with our raincoats and umbrellas! It's only water.

We drove to the town of Porthmadog and found a big Lidl where we wasted some time doing some grocery shopping. Next door there was a camping store where we had a look around as well.

Fun afternoon at Caernarfon Castle

We said goodbye to Helen and Tony just after 9:30am. They were headed back home to Somerset, England. We'll actually be stopping in there to say hi to them again in a couple of weeks time.

We headed about a half an hour south, across the bridge over the Menai Strait and past the town of Caernarfon to a waterfront spot overlooking the strait. As we passed the town of Caernarfon, we saw a huge castle!