The quirky characters we meet on the road would be right at home in a Kerouac novel

One day, I tell myself, I’ll write the Great American Novel. Then I have to remind myself that I’m neither great, nor American, nor a novelist.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been inspired by Kerouac’s seminal 1950s classic On the Road and, the more we grind out the miles on our increasingly epic European vacation, the more I’m reminded that the Beat Generation he eulogised has an echo in the characters we meet along the way.

But, while I’ll never come close to capturing the zeitgeist like Kerouac, I’m still going to try to identify some of the modern-day Dean Moriartys of the motorhoming world.

RETRO REG

Reg, with his cherished plate W4 NDR on a customised 1976 Bedford van, is a 73-year-old former roadie for Uriah Heep who went AWOL from their 1984 comeback tour of US Army bases in Germany and, after a particularly bad acid trip, decided to see what was “out there”.

He picked up a 17-year-old hitch-hiker, Brunhilde, in Oberammergau and they’ve been together ever since.

They know all the dope dealers between Murmansk and Gibraltar, survive on state handouts and “soul food” sales at European rock festivals and keep everyone else on the campsite awake until the early hours with their ear-splitting music, usually Golden Earring, Van Der Graf Generator, Focus and, predictably, the Heep.

If you’re unlucky, Brunhilde will show you her tattoos, chronicling the atrocities of the Stasi in great detail.