I'm one of a group of four who are currently planning our first motorcyle adventure...travelling from the UK to Timbuktu and back whilst raising money for charity. From the start we decided that we should all have the same bikes, so after lots of debate and constant referral to Mr Scott's Adventure Motocycle Handbook, rightly or wrongly we eventually all agreed on the F650 GS,not least because one of our group already had one!

Not being that vertically challenged I opted to go for the Dakar version, and decided that despite not setting off until November 2011, I would get the bike in plenty of time to get used to it and bolt on any relevant bits that I thought I would need to add. So in March this year I stumbled across an 06 Dakar on only 10K miles with getting on for £2000 of extra's already bolted on.

Since passing my bike test, about 4 years ago, my previous bikes were an old Honda VFR 750 followed by Honda VTR 1000 Firestorm, so I must admit I had slight reservations about getting something with less than half the horsepower and almost twice the 0-60 time but I couldn't justify to SWMBO having 2 bikes so I had to bite the bullet and convince myself that as compensation I would probably live a bit longer;-).

After collecting my new toy, my initial thoughts were how on earth am I going to climb on to this? as it appeared to be twice as tall as anything I'd been on previously. But within a day or two I soon got used to the height as I did the relative lack of oomph in comparison with the Firestorm. Within a short while, I began to really enjoy the more upright riding position, the improved visability, and the way I could throw it around corners. It really is a fun bike to ride.

Over 6 months and 2500 miles later I'm still really enjoying riding it. The bike is used daily for commuting, come rain or shine (and recently snow and ice) and has also been out on a few longer runs ( up to 200 miles) fully loaded without missing a beat. The bike continually returns about 65mpg regardless of how hard it's ridden, and can sit at 80mph on the motorway for hours on end.

So far I've not taken her off-road much, but have had a few jaunts down some muddy forest tracks with out any problems.

All in all, I can find very little to fault. If I had one critism it would be that I miss not having a 6th gear at motorway speeds, but apart from that I'm so far pleased with my choice.