Wow what a day so far. Up and out at 8am this morning and scrapped a load of snow off my car.
Managed to visit all five on my list of places...
Cockfields Farm - nice place, massive inside but only half of it used for aquatic stuff. Nothing really of note in there for what I was looking for but had a lot of fish and general stuff.
Maidenhead Aquatics (Stockport) - My impression of MA was that it was a massive place. Was surprised that this was a rather small size of similar size to my usual LFS. However, they had all sorts in and walking outside I found a massive box full of SUMATRA DRIFTWOOD! Managed to pick up two nice pieces which will be on the forum with photos soon. So I bought a few bits and bobs. The only downside was on of the blokes who worked there was very annoying so didn't buy everything I wanted from there.
Wilmslow Pets & Aquatics - Small area inside a garden center. Wasn't really impressed so didn't spend much time in there.
World of Water - WOW! Massive place, loads of massive pieces of bogwood and nearly bought some more. For equipment and decor items this would be the place to go. Large selection of fish too.
BAS, Bolton - I thought that WOW was massive. This was twice the size. They had so many blooming tanks, I couldn't spend much time looking around. They didn't seem to have any specialist planted tank stuff which I was looking for but was well impressed with the variety of fish and they seemed at a reasonable price.
So all in all, a very productive day, but couldn't find any ECO-Complete substrate.