Fridge03

Hi all, So here I am, dangling my toe into the world of 2 wheels. I’m 34, been a car driver since I was 18. Never really considered a bike before but with fuel prices going up and my commute to work changing, it’s starting to make a lot more sense to learn. I will be primarily using it for commuting, with my route being 18 miles along mostly B roads which tend to be quite quiet and a small section of A road which is single carriage way but 60mph limit. The last couple of miles is where I’m really considering the benefits of a bike as it’s a regular slow crawl. Can take up to 30 mins just to get through that last couple miles. I also respond on-call, to my local station 3 miles away with a 5 minute turnout which again I’m thinking a bike could help with. This is again a country B road. I'm 99.9% convinced (so much so, that my CBT is booked for 3 weeks time) that I will be sticking with that for at least a year, maybe ride out the 2 years then reconsider my options as to go for my full licence or not. So I'm looking for a decent bike. The least amount I can spend to get something decent...the better...however I don't have a budget per-se. Would rather spend a bit more if I have to get something suitable and reliable. I’m a 6ft biggish guy (about 95kg) so a 125 on the "larger size" or at least not a grom would be what I am after. My two choices are searching for a decent used Varadero as I've seen people rave about these and the feedback tends to be excellent. However being completely new to the world of bikes, I'm more tempted to look at new (or nearly new) so get a bit of piece of mind with warranty/condition etc. So the new ones I'm looking at are Suzuki GSX-125, KTM Duke 125, Yamaha MT125 or a Honda CB125R. Again, read/watched lots of reviews and all of them score high. I'm not interested in the Chinese brands as for every good review, there seems to be at least the same amount of bad. So it's more down to what would suit my frame more I guess? Any suggestions or thoughts would be hugely appreciated on the bikes. Secondly, in regards to gear. I want to start picking up some pieces. I know you can't really put a price on safety (and will defo be buying a brand new helmet!) but in general is it easy enough to maybe pick up 2nd hand gear to get me started and until I figure out what works best for me? Thanks all