I'm sure even experienced travellers riding well sorted 650's wish they were on a 250 some days (and without the luggage).

Long distance travel on a motorbike is always going to be a compromise as the journey will inevitably involve travelling on many different types of road from motoways to almost impassable unpaved roads and through different climates possibly from arctic to tropical so it's virtually impossible to carry everything you need with you all the time.

The idea that going faster you meet less people may be true but in my experience anywhere you're going fast is simply because you want to get somewhere interesting. The pace at which you travel is not controlled by how fast your bike is but by how much you stop to explore your surroundings - it took us 6 months to travel 10,000 miles from Nairobi to Cape Town (55 miles a day or 2 days a week on the bike and a lot of R&R) and it would have taken the same amount of time if we'd been on a 125cc instead of 1000cc bike.

I can certainly see the benefits of using a small bike for local explorattion in less developed places but for a journey starting in Europe and heading south or east to Asia or Africa a modern 650 seems to offer the best of all worlds.

Exactly. Once a bike in it's loaded condition is capable of using the motorways for hours the miles per week seems to be fixed by the speed of the traffic. Sure, you can ride a "Sports Tourer" like a loon and do 600 km in 4 hours across Germany on a Sunday, but there is no way to keep this up Monday and Tuesday and on and on. I've had GPS since the late 90's and kept records of the moving average. On trips over a week it's always 45 mph there or there abouts for Europe regardless of using a 599cc 40 Hp machine that tops out at 90 mph or a 1085cc, 85 Hp, 140 mph one. My 500cc, 18 Hp, 75 mph Enfield averaged over 35 mph and my 291cc, 23 Hp, 85 mph MZ can average over 40 admittedly the last two were without a pillion.

I think the on-road difference is small, the off road one bigger. I also think that is the ancient tale of the tortoise and the hare, the hare is only 10 minutes a day quicker because he spends longer filling up and getting his neck and shoulders back in working order after running a tank through at full speed.

On my first trip to Morocco we found a track with a lot of loose sand. Nothing silly but everyone was out of practice and fell off a lot. I picked a BMW F650 up maybe ten times and was very much ready for a when we'd done. A guy who picked up an R1100GS at least as many times went straight to bed and woke up 10 hours later with a banging headache from the loss of fluids. Another few days like that and the 650's would have been miles ahead while the 1100 guy needed a rest.

Andy