We are planning a two week trip to the UK in June. We land at Heathrow and will end with a night or two in Edinburgh and a final night in London. We know we want to spend two nights each in Oxford, York, and Edinburgh. We'll make reservations in those places and for our one night in London. We plan to catch a train to Oxford straight away, another train to York, and pick up a rental car that we'll return in Edinburgh. We fly from Edinburgh to London, overnight there and back home to hot, humid, Florida. We had hoped to spend two days on Skye. The more we search the more places we want to see and Mr. Rover (not our real names!) feels it's fine to skip the reservations because "We don't know how long we might want to stay in one place" I'm thinking I know I don't want to sleep in a car. We did this in Ireland a couple of years ago. We left Dingle and meandered our way to Dublin with no reservations, just stopping at B&Bs till we found a room. We only had problems one night. But, when I was looking for something on Skye everything was booked. I'm not totally on board with his philosophy at this point. Any suggestions or advice welcome.

Well if everything is already fully booked now I think it would be simply ridiculous to head there and hope to find a place to stay. This isn't a huge city with thousands of options.

I would start trying to contact places now directly - email or phone - and hope that someone still has a place available.

2 weeks
lets say 13 days

3 London
2 Oxford
2 York
1 Travel
2 Skye
2 Edinburgh
1 London

a fair bit of travelling, I think I might do some of this by train (say to Edinburgh) then train into the highlands. I'd try to Openjaw this so you don't need to get all the way to London just to leave the country.

If you can't find rooms on http://www.skye.co.uk/ then you have a problem, I would not wing-it in June.

Good advice from bilboburglar.

I think in June you will not have trouble finding B&B accommodation in York or Skye or (you didn't ask) Inverness or Aberdeen by going to the local tourist office (well-marked) and paying a small fee. You should plan to stop fairly early to find lodging, which may bother you if you are a gotta tour type, but you can check out the town or village, find a pub, get some exercise, etc.

Hi roving redhead,
You are lucky that you are outwith the Scottish and English school holidays but I think that you should still book accommodation in Edinburgh and Skye. You should definitely book the train online now if you are taking it as the prices will definitely go up. If it looks as if most B and Bs are full on Skye then it is worth phoning a few of them directly and asking if they can recommend someone - we have stayed with some lovely families this way who don't usually do B&B. I'm a bit worried about the huge drives that you are planning although I know that distances are a bit different for Americans! If you are looking for last minute accommodation in Edinburgh try Hotwire as it is the "big city". We have stayed in the Caledonian hotel at am amazing rate although the staff did make us feel like the "poor relations" Driving from Skye to Edinburgh is a day of your holiday and then the next day you'll have to get to the airport/ leave the hire car/ check in etc to travel to London. Do you think that it's a bit ambitious? Don't let anyone send you to Inverness or Aberdeen as well or you are going to spend your whole holiday on the motorway!

Hamba
Hambabarbara

All good information. We can't change our airline reservations, the tickets are a generous gift from one of our children. We had planned two days for each overnight. Now my husband is watching EVERY YouTube video of Scotland and getting ideas. I am going to try to refine our plans and push for less driving. The reason we are getting a car in York is so we can see Hadrian's Wall. That's where things start to get dicey for me. We had planned on a night in Durham but now he wants to scratch that. I guess it comes down to this: I'd love to visit a series of towns and villages and stay two nights in each one with small trips each day. He wants to see the wild part of Scotland.
As for the trains, I have that marked on my calendar.
We have been using a UK distance calculator we found online. Should we add time to the estimates we are finding? I've been reading about one lane roads and I know we won't be driving 70 mph on any of them.

A few comments:

There is no train from LHR to Oxford. Catch the coach from the airport to the center of Oxford instead. Otherwise you end up having to either travel in to London and back out to Oxford - or you have to take a coach to Reading and schlepp to train station for a train to Oxford. A coach from the airport is much easier.

BUT -- I would do things differently . . . I'd fly from LHR up to Edinburgh on your arrival day. Stay 3 nights car-less. Then collect a car drive through the Trossachs 2 nights, Skye 3 nights, somewhere south of Glasgow 1 night, in York 2 nights, 2 nights near Oxford , drive to LHR, drop car - fly home.

Another option - the same as above except drop the car in York, train to Oxford, coach to LHR . . .

Jamir's, you are so good! Brilliant solution !