newbie needs advice, hich trail bike ?

[DaveS]

Well the crucial requirement you have is "light"........ and you're in a big honda trail bike forum so exit stage left!

Neither the AT or TA, or Varadero for that matter are light however they are taken off road.

As for the sub £1K I bought a 1987 TA for £750 a few years back and spent effort and cash getting it up to scratch. This again isn't light but felt more suitable for a bit of greenlaning than my current AT.
If it were me I'd look in the For Sale section where there's a DR 350 for £900 which looks much more like what you want.

[Fatjohn]

I don't know anything about them (other than that they are loved by their owners) but what about a Honda Dominator? Or a XR650R?

Met a couple of Dommie owners who rave about them and I get the impression that the XR is a favourite of overlanders but that's the extent of my knowledge I'm afraid.

(This one to the audience at large) What's that website for 2 wheeled overlanders? "two wheels, one planet", that one? Horizons Unlimited or something isn't it? Anyway, maybe their machine specific forums would help give you some idea as to what may suit you best.

[iswoolley]

From what ROTAX wrote I'd recommend looking around for something like an XRL250. I picked up a C-reg one for £750 as my first true-offroader (I'll ignore the XT600 I had for the moment). Unburstable motor, light, and great for chucking around the green lanes, then chucking in the back of the garage and forgetting about until next weekend. Whatever you get, remember to treat bearings, c&s and tyres as consumables, all of which might need replacing on something old and cheap.

Horizons Unlimited can be found at www.horizonsunlimited.com, and it's a great traveller-oriented website.

[Blues N Twos]

You can pick up some real nice imported Dominators on the Aution site for around the grand mark.

An XL600 or similar would suit you as there both light compared to what we ride here.

Jon