I use mainly the free sites now, when I do need to find anything else I use Ancestry. They used to give a free trial, 2 weeks I think, so you could do the basic searches - just remember to cancel the subscription if you don't want to pay to carry on. You can just have a month at a time whenever you want. Also note that anything you want a copy of download to your computer to print it, if you don't have membership running you cannot access saved records.
FreeREG, FreeCEN, FreeBMD all good. FamilySearch is another good one to look at, you can pay for that too.
County records also handy, most areas have parish records you can look at - online parish clerks.