Honda CRF300L

After a lifetime of owning bigger motorcycles, the Honda CRF300L taught me an important lesson. You don’t need a lot of horsepower to have a lot of fun.

On paper the CRF300L shouldn’t really work for me. At sixty-something years of age, after owning everything from CB750s and CB1300s to BMW R1150GS Adventures and Africa Twins, I should probably have dismissed it as underpowered and too small. Instead, I absolutely love the thing.

The CRF300L takes me back to what motorcycling was about when I first started riding. It’s light, simple, unintimidating and always encourages me to take the road less travelled. Where larger adventure bikes sometimes make you think about where you’re going, the CRF300L simply encourages you to go.

It won’t win any drag races and it certainly isn’t built for sitting at motorway speeds all day long. What it does exceptionally well is put a smile on your face. Narrow lanes, forest tracks, mountain roads and forgotten backroads are exactly where it feels at home.

One of the biggest surprises has been just how economical it is. The little Honda seems capable of running all day on the contents of a teacup, yet still has enough performance to be genuinely useful. The combination of light weight, simplicity and reliability makes it a remarkably capable travelling companion.

The older I get, the more I appreciate motorcycles that don’t make life complicated. The CRF300L falls firmly into that category. It asks very little of its rider and delivers far more enjoyment than the specification sheet suggests it should.

Perhaps that’s why I enjoy it so much.

After seventeen motorcycles, countless journeys and hundreds of thousands of miles, the CRF300L has reminded me that adventure isn’t measured in engine capacity, horsepower or the size of the fuel tank.

It’s measured by what lies around the next bend.

And the little Honda always seems keen to find out.