I've not been a loyal customer for a good number of years, for a good number of reasons.
Our local moved to a retail park, now a 90 minute round trip only to discover their hopeless website, is also inaccurate, but 'they can order the bits for me & I can collect in store to avoid the extra postage'!
As others have said, I've dabbled with Rapberry Pi, my last effort a real corker, but Maplin only had some of the bits required, half of which, mail order.
Passing by the store 3 years ago, I know, I'll nip in since my Roberts R707 is due a set of batteries ..... At £9.99 each, the two stocked cells remained on the shelves! (Wilko's were selling Varta for £1.99 at that time). Browsing further revealed a toy shop with vastly overpriced phono sockets, switches, wire, heatshrink, switch cleaner et al, as for discrete components, slim chance.
A shame, when I was at college, you could design a stereo amplifier, nip to Maplin who would have all items in stock, plus things you hadn't considered feasible for a homebrew project, like back-lit VU meters!
Ho-hum,
Mark