Sheffield – 1st August

I was so pleased to sleep in until 8am on Saturday 1st August and it felt so good. I had tea and toast before tackling the planning and budgeting for August.
It was tricky to set a budget for August as I knew I would be booking flights back to Türkiye, booking more train/bus tickets and having a few other bigger purchases coming up. Captain Caveman and I were also off on another couple of holidays at the end of August. I decided that, as I’d managed to just about survive a very busy July on £28 per day that I would set it at £25 per day for August, making the overall budget £775 for the month. This was easily twice the amount of what I would have allowed for staying in Dalyan and felt doable. I did a bit of blog editing before work, noting I was getting a bit behind on the updates due to being so busy with other stuff. The Top 3 countries reading my blog in July were UK, USA and Türkiye, followed by France, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Belgium, Australia and Vietnam (in 10th place). I had also seen a little bit of a drop in the amount of readers (6%) which often happens in the summer months as people are busy with their family and holidays. It was also due to me not having posted a blog every single day, which I needed to plan better.
After working all day, I booked a one way flight to Dalaman for me and return flights for Captain Caveman. They were with Sun Express from Manchester and, because they needed to be after work hours for Captain Caveman, they weren’t cheap. I paid £353.09 for all 3 flights (without any luggage)! I also booked a train ticket for £17 and looked at Flixbus for a cheaper alternative to airport parking for a holiday in September. My friend who I was travelling with had got it down to £124 to park outside of Heathrow airport and shuttle in (plus the cost of petrol, of course). I could not justify that price and suggested a bus for £27.30 return each! We decided to think about it and sort it when we met up, but in my mind I would much rather get the bus. I had a tidy up around the flat, put some washing on and then went back to work. I’d started to work on some quotes for the Christmas markets later this year.
Captain Caveman arrived home about 9pm as he was volunteering for the culvert walk early tomorrow morning.
He’d had a good trip and I was sad to have missed seeing Watto & Chrissy, our fellow cave/Vietnam friends who we had shared a house with in Phong Nha. He’d also called at The Courtyard Dairy near Settle, his new favourite cheese shop. He’d spent almost £35 on 4 cheeses and some membrillo and we were looking forward to having a few cheese and wine evenings. They also gave us a voucher of £10 off our next online order.

Gratitude List
1. A lay in until 8am, while Captain Caveman was away
2. Getting our flights booked to go back to Dalyan
3. Cheese.