My motorcycle story has taken a new turn: my son has started riding too.
For his eighteenth birthday, I gave him his first motorcycle lesson. He had never even sat on a bike before. Four lessons practising low-speed manoeuvres and six road lessons later, he had his A1 licence.
Unfortunately, the European A1 category feels a bit like a glorified moped licence. From eighteen to twenty, you’re limited to 125cc and around 15 horsepower. You might think that leaves very little room for fun. But with a little creativity, a 125 two-stroke or a mildly tuned 125 four-stroke can still be quite entertaining—especially if you choose something light with the right pedigree.
After a bit of searching, we settled on a Beta 125 LC. It’s a wonderfully light little off-road bike, weighing about 105 kilos, if I remember correctly. Ours is a 2021 model with the Yamaha Minarelli engine: a tough, dependable little unit.
We’ve made a few changes, so it probably produces a fair bit more than the standard power limit—perhaps another five or six horsepower. For the riding we do, I’m comfortable with that. In deep, soft sand, a little extra power makes a real difference. Without it, the bike struggles to keep moving, and to my mind, being underpowered in those conditions can create problems of its own.
Our road riding is limited to connecting stretches between trails. This isn’t a bike he uses every day on public roads, and we’re not talking about some wildly tuned machine with brakes that can’t keep up.
But the bike itself is only part of the story. As a father, there are few things better than sharing your favourite hobby with your son. Riding comes with risks, of course, but watching him slide the bike through a turn ahead of me, or try to lift the front wheel as he comes out of a dip, is just brilliant.
We’ve got some great rides ahead of us over the next few years. And now that I’ve added a lighter bike to my own garage, I’ve got just the thing to join him.
