I am planning my 4th trip to England and Belgium. I LOVE to stay at B&Bs. (The beautiful family run ones ... NOT the $200 a night ones). The thing is, I always like to stay in new places. (even though I may have really enjoyed a place I stayed at - I rather recommend it than to personally go back. This way I can experience more -it makes sense to me LOL!)

2 years ago when I searched the web for "England (or London) B&Bs" so many websites came up... now I am just not getting what I am looking for. (Too many commercial websites featuring "hotels" that serve breakfast.

CAN ANYONE HELP ME? You can either give me websites that help me search - or recommend some places (in London -suburbs preferred, and Bath.I found a GREAT one for Brighton already!). I will be traveling alone -and really need my own bathroom (but doesn't have to be ensuite)-and it MUST BE a non-smoking room!

Thanks!

Try smoothhound.co.uk - a website that has all sorts of properties from hotels to guest houses to B&Bs.

Stilwells http://www.stilwell.co.uk/
is a good one.

There are links to others at http://www.sylviamilne.btinternet.co...#Accommodation

I usually try at local sources, not nation-wide sites. Also, I avoid sites that work for profit, so show only those owners that have paid them for a link. Such owners tend to cost more than those of other, smaller, places. I enter a county and b and b in Google, something like Essex bed breakfast, and get a long list of links. I look for those that are not some great international company, but are local, and start there.

I also go through the county local government. I start on (for example) Kent County Council, and use the hyperlinks from the home page to give me Tourist information, then Accommodation, and then Bed and breakfast.

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Look on Karen Brown's website, http://www.karenbrown.com. I've used her B&B recommendations for Italy; don't know how she stacks up for UK.

http://www.ukbed.com/london/
http://www.londontown.com/

I almost rarely use the broad B&B search sites (smoothhound, stillwells, etc.) unless I'm having problems finding a place. they have to pay to be listed on these sites and this is no guarantee they are better than unlisted places.

More and more B&Bs have their own websites and what I do is search for "------- bed and breakfast " (fill in the towns / villages in the areas you want to stay.

Now - most of the B&B search websites are fine - but sometimes I have even found that booking directly w/ the B&B gets a lower rate. This is more common for self catering cottages. I have booked cottages and often found them to be 10% to 15% cheaper booked directly.

Thank you for the responses, but I think some people really misunderstood. This is NOT my first time searching for B&Bs. I certainly do not want those sites where they only include places that pay to be on the list, and I don't want to pay a service to book the B&B for me.
What I meant (my original post) is that when I used to type in (for example) London B&Bs on Google (my new preffered engine) or yahoo etc. I used to get a lot more quality sites. One impaticular that I remember from a few years ago had B&Bs broken down by location, and it was just family run places. (and the had links to their home pages) I just wanted to know if anyone knew of some sites like that because they seem to be GONE! (I have been searching!!)... I never meant to give the impression that I didn't know how to use a search engine.

(I really do appreciate everyone's help though!!!) I hope you guys continue to help! Thanks!

Taggie,
http://www.smoothhound.co.uk/hotels/aran.html

is working out nicely. Thanks!! ... I am starting to visit all the links now. So thank you to everyone who left a link. GREATLY APPRECIATED!!

Have you tried using the Fodor's hotel search here? I found links to lovely B&B's for my trip to France this Spring, and I was not disappointed!