Best Bed and Breakfast Site

You definitely need to book your first night and last nights in the UK. I always google the village/town I want to stay in and find a B&B. Will you be renting a car? If you will be driving you wouldn't have to book every night a head of time (I know a lot of people will disagree with this), when you drive and have everything booked ahead you time have a time limit you have to stay with. By not having every night prebooked it gives you the freedom of spending as much or as little time in a village/town. When you decide that you would like to stop for the day just watch for B&B signs, stop and ask if they have a room for the night, most of them will offer to show you the room before you decide if you want to stay there. We have done this many, many times during the summer months. We have never spent more then 15 minutes finding a room. Your could also go into a TI (tourist information) center in a village and they could book a room in that village or the next one you want to go to. There are hundreds of B&Bs that do not advertise, but depends solely on their signs.

Robin has given what I think is great advice. That is how we travel. If you go to one B&B and they are full, they will usually make a call to someone they know. One of our best experiences was staying in Bath at a B&B and asking for recommendations for our next stop. Owners family owned a place that was not advertised and make reservations for us. We ended up in a home over four hundred years old right next to Princess Anne's estate. We have also used Smoothhound.com for B&B places. Good luck and enjoy.

I prefer to look at TripAdvisor for any given city or village. You can chose "B &B" rather than "hotel" and search by reading reviews. You can also look at their maps and chose by location rather than reviews. Once you find one that looks good, then go directly to the owners and talk with them.

We have found wonderful places to stay, but I've spent a lot of time searching and reading reviews to get the "best" places for our desires. But, for us, a B & B is not just a place to lay our heads, but part of the whole experience, so I work at getting just the right place. I don't know if I'd be as happy getting a place on the fly.

Google B&B England and web sites will appear. I have used some, but can't remember which ones. I usually spend quite a bit of time looking for where we will stay and use many options. I have done the "just show up and look for a place" method, but never for a whole trip. I just don't like the constant unknown, the having to find a place, how do I compare prices, etc. I usually book 90-95% of my trip (last trip in 2016 - did not include England-we had 23 nights with 2 nights I did not book in advance) Occasionally, I have an area where I am not sure what I will want to do (stay longer, leave). I call those flex days since I leave my options open and find a place that night. I have never had any trouble finding a place and while they are fine for an overnight, they are not usually my favorite. I spend a lot of time looking, evaluating and deciding...particularly if we are going to spend multiple nights at one B&B. In 20014, we had 3 nights in the Highlands. I really did not know where we wanted to stay so left them all open. It really worked out well and we found great options. However, my cousin did the same thing (after talking to me) and for some reason they could not find ANYTHING. To quote her:

It wasn't just hotels that were full. It was everything. Every b&b said no vacancy. Someone said something about workers coming to work wind farms filling everything. Who knew??

They ended up paying a lot more than they wanted, but it was only 2 nights. (they had made reservations the rest of the trip) Probably not typical, but I did feel bad since I had told her we had no problems. Anyway, I have never had any trouble using different web sites to research and book. I just put in a request for a B&B in Stockholm next May and am awaiting my reply. Have fun planning, My last trip that included England was 2014, so if you have specific areas, I would be happy to share where we stayed (but be aware I am a budget traveler. That trip our accommodations averaged under $100.00 a night...which was not easy considering we spent 9 of the 25 nights in the expensive cities of Paris and London)

We lived in Germany from 87-91, before the internet. Occasionally, I would use a guidebook and call ahead and book a room.
However, we did a lot of impromptu driving for a long weekend or even a week, not making reservations at all.

This worked very well about half the time, but we stopped doing this after twice driving several hours and our planned city to stay was fully booked for many miles around and we had to drive more than two hours to find a place to stay. It was tiring and frustrating and we were not very happy with were we stayed.

When we plan a land trip, I always plan ahead, do the RESEARCH, which tells me what to see in an area, the best hotels or B and Bs at the best location for our approved price, were we can park. That is important booking a place to stay in European cities, where parking can be a problem and/or be expensive.

Also, sometimes we book tours, based on what is available and at the best cost.

Thank you for all the feedback! I am a big fan of using Air BnB and other sites when looking for lodging in US. I wasn't sure if there were specific sites used by those in the UK that would be best and reliable.

Try these:> www.farmstay.co.uk
http://www.britainsfinest.co.uk/bedandbreakfast/

However, if on any site, you may like to contact direct those places that are on your shortlist to see of they will come in at a lower price as they don’t have to pay commission to others.

I have used this site www.smoothhound.co.uk/ to get a general idea of B&B's in an area. Then I'll google the specific B&B's that have caught my interest.