Well, this holiday has been very uninspiring. It started well with a unfortunately brief visit from Dan. However it was lovely to see him and catch up on what has been going on in more than blog detail. While Dan was up we went out to a Chinese Buffet which we often visit, and I got food poisoning. This is I think the second time I have ever had it and it was rather unpleasant. This caused a delay in part two of out plan which was a trip up north to visit my Dad and his girlfriend. We eventually made it up mid week and went to the Highland Wildlife Park. They were very good to us and despite the fact I left my handbag with both our passes in it at home they looked us up and let us in.
The park was a bit quiet and had less snow than I had hopped but more ice. We did not spend as long as normal there as the guide who takes the landrover tours was having a day off. Kit got a few excellent photos.
The Wildcats are very hard to get good photos of, and Kit has done amazingly well here.
The plan for the next day was to go caching, however after two caches we got rather distracted in an antiques shop in Fochabers. Here we found a few interesting razors. A cheap black razor which we will use to work out how to hone well. A strange razor with horn scales that appears to have been branded for a shop or company based in Scotland. A rather lovely 4 day set that looks as if it has ivory scales and is in good condition. And a miss buy of a Rolls Royce razor that although it is in fantastic condition we should not have paid what we did for.
These buys have led us to look at hones and strops with more determination than before. We have picked up a very cheap strop (it is well known that the first one you own you are likely to shred to ribbons as you practice), a 1000/ 6000 Japanese King hone and a set of three Welsh Slate Hones for finishing. We are waiting for these with excitement as they have a good reputation.
It is suggested by the shaving world to buy your first razor shave ready to know what good is and then be able to maintain it. However, none of the razors we have are shave ready- so we are looking at sending one of them away to be honed. There is a lot of choice in where to send razors, we just need to make a decision and send one there (or buy a shave ready from someone 
)
The only problem is that this has got me looking at lovely razors and falling in love with abalone scalles (not a cheap obsesion) nevermind. Onwards as they say.
As the tail end of the holiday came in to site I got a cold that has knackered any plans of doing anything with the end of the holiday and then gave it to Kit for the last day just in time for going back to work.
