Every time I look at buying a new pair of outdoor boots/shoes I'm surprised at how few big sizes are stocked or even manufactured. It's not rare that I go into a shop, and there will be another bigfoot in the store, also desperately trying to figure out if they are able to squeeze their feet into the biggest available size.
Boots in a size 12 (typically labeled a EU 47...I've found lately that EU sizes seem to offer a far better guide for sizing) are pretty thin on the ground, and anything above that is normally limited to 1 or 2 models if you are in a decent store (NONE in a crap store). This seems peculiar - I wear a size 11 in an English made school shoe, which isn't really that enormous and people always seem to at least one size bigger In walking/mountaineering boots, which puts me in the 12/12.5 (EU48) range, perhaps more if the boots are made in Italy. Considering that the average shoe size is a 10 in the UK, I'm surely not that far out of range!
I'd be very curious to hear from anyone who works in an outdoors shop or even from someone working at a distributor on the spread of sizes that they sell. It's not like the sales are always full of size 47/48 boots.
Am I imagining it, or do people with slightly bigger feet than average (or those who don't want their toes crushed) really not very well catered for?