I didn't think they existed anymore...

...but finding myself in Rochester with my beloved to meet our wedding photographer for a coffee, we found an honest to god bricks and mortar FLGS:

Rochester Games & Models! I'm still sad that I don't have a FLGS since Westgate Games went away, so I had to go in and investigate, and I'm happy that I did. Unfortunately we only had about quarter of an hour before we had to leave, so I didn't get to spend as much time as I'd have liked riffling through the racks of minis:  

I mean, they had everything from Ral Partha to Foundry and a ton in between! Alas, I didn't have time to buy any single miniatures (probably for the best, as I almost bought a copy of AFMBE on my way out, and in my state of hobby shop nostalgia could have walked away with a truckload more), but did pick up some boxes from fire forge that I'd been planning on ordering online, as well as a Perry medieval cottage (I'll update the tally when I'm not sat on a train back to Canterbury posting from my phone). 

Although ordering online would have saved me some money, I was more than happy to pay full retail to support a family business. Plus, it took the online retailer I was going to order from two weeks to get back to me with an answer to my stock question, the lady in the shop took seconds ;) 

Long story short, we're probably going to be coming back to Rochester in the future to investigate a bit more, and when we do I'll be setting aside some time to have a proper rummage...


[edit, now we're home:] as well as my unexpected purchase in Rochester, I've had a couple of other bits turn up:

Starting top left and working clockwise, we have:

• A plastic mounted Norman-looking type and some sort of spear-wielding chap on foot, surprise minis for my ASOIAF project in exchange for sending a nice chap over on the LAF a sprue of WF zombies 
• a half dozen LOTR minis, for Stark character conversions - for example, Theoden will likely be the basis of a Blackfish conversion (scale armour teehee),and Eowyn is an especially nice mini of a female in practical armour. The chap I bought these from sent me the wrong Legolas, but has very kindly offered to send the correct one (for a 'Theon: the early days' conversion) FOC, which is nice. 
• you can barely see them, but a bunch of hoplite shields for my planned Stark shield conversions and a Hasslefree 'Markus', to use as the basis of a conversion inspired by the limited edition Gale Force 9 illithid warrior - there was a bit of a saga with these, as my order email apparently went awry, but Dameon at Artemis Black's got it all straightened out and I have them now!

Which leaves the tally at: 19 vs 380 = -361 (I'm not counting the cottage as a miniature, so ner)