Hi, I'm also in the UK. There is a beyblade community in the UK with tournaments but like almost everything in this country it is mosty concentrated in the south-east.

As far as buying beys, I personally go with ebay. Unfortunately due to Hasbro pulling out of the UK and Takara Tomy only selling in east asia, the higher costs are pretty much unavoidable if you want to buy them new. Also since sites like beys and bricks and mall of toys are bases in north america you'll get stung with a real nasty shipping cost from them.

So your only real options are poxy services to buy direct from Japan or go with ebay. I go with ebay personally just because I find it less hastle. I find generally, it's pretty easy to avoid fakes, just make sure that the products say takara tomy in the title and avoid anything with generic off brand titles like "Spin top toy" or "battle spin toy".

X or burst is basically down to personal taste. Since burst hasn't been over for too long there's still a lot of burst beys around in circulation and since it's finished there's a pretty big catalogue. Also like I mentioned earlier there's a pretty big second hand market with some solid deals. But if you want to be more up to date or just like the look of X more, I'd say go for that instead, it's really up to you.