Young, horny and broke, the writer Jack Kerouac famously spent seven years on the road. Hitchhiking and bussing, he crisscrossed America, and the places he saw, the wild ones he met, the bars he hit and the girls he laid made him the inspiration of a whole generation. The beat generation. They call it the bus-pass generation now.

I like to think of Ben Tristem as the Kerouac of today. He has just completed his first year on the road, a year in which he has crisscrossed the UK with his girlfriend, Lizzie, and his dog, Farley. Like Kerouac, he won’t be on the road for ever. He means to be an astronaut next, he tells you; no man his age better qualified to be one, he says. He is 28. Meanwhile, his current role is pioneering a lifestyle unique to our extraordinary times.

A year ago, he and Lizzie were living the conventional lives of successful professional people. Ben was a self-employed computer consultant, Lizzie worked in Cambridge University law library. They divided their time between London and a cottage in Suffolk, and everything was fine, so people who knew them must have been astonished when they sold the highly desirable South Kensington flat, the Rover 200 and almost all their possessions, and bought a motorhome. It was a large, smart motorhome, the best that £50,000 could buy, and they filled it with £10,000 worth of technological gear, but all the same: a motorhome! Still, they are not people to be put off by a raised eyebrow or two. Who knew what Ben was going to do next? He was, after all, a physicist, an engineer, a pilot, a free-fall skydiver, a trained stuntman with a black belt in tae kwon do; and hadn’t he come second in Channel 4’s Superhuman contest, doing particularly well in the Fearless section? He almost came first, he says.

So, they moved fearlessly into their Eura Mobil home and began a new life, first heading south to the lush pastures of Devon, then west to Wales and north to the Lake District and the Scottish Highlands, running Tristem Enterprises (www.tristem.net) while on the road. They took their time, going for the best views and always avoiding the big caravan parks. They are rather rude about these. They go for the small farm sites themselves, as you often have one to yourself, though sometimes you get company. They once awoke to find llamas nuzzling the paintwork. They had parked at a Scottish llama farm.

No trouble parking, then? None, says Ben, even in London. “If we are going there,” he says, “we arrive on Sunday morning and park on the Embankment. Perfectly legal, no trouble to anyone and a millionaire view of the river.

We stay there until Monday, drive off just before the traffic wardens start, and we are back in the countryside in no time.”

The essential key to being on the road as internet retail sales agents, which is what they are, is a formi-dable array of technologies, powered by diesel generator. Their motorhome — van, they call it, let’s call it a van — their van has become more and more high-tech. There is a national prize for high-techness, and last year they won it. Their van, declared Barrons, the motor-caravan people, was the most advanced gadget van in the UK. They were pleased to hear it.

They showed me round it, and at first sight, it doesn’t look out of the ordinary. You expect the yacht-like furniture and lots of lockers, but not, perhaps, the large double bed or the modern kitchen or the proper bathroom. Oh good, the lavatory has a grown-up flush...

It all looks jolly comfortable, but this is not just their home. It is their office, too, and their car; and at this point, high-tech rules. Alpine navigational software gets them safely to the Shetlands, there’s an iPod sound system to sing along to, and a PDA with a Bluetooth link to the phone, for making hands-free calls while at the wheel, and their WiFi Dell computers connect to the net through an Orange 3G mobile- office card — powerful communicators that give a chap e-mail on the move, exchange multimedia messages and probably put the kettle on and walk the dog.

Oh yes, the dog. Farley is a glossy black spaniel puppy. He sits at their feet while on the move, conscientiously sniffs a new bit of the world every time they stop, and speaks very highly of the swanky gear that lets Ben and Lizzie run their busy and profitable business while bowling down country lanes in Devon or admiring Loch Ness.

So, as the manufacturers would say, a truly teched-up transporter. All the same, it’s not a perfect teched-up transporter. A year on the road in it has taught Tristem Enterprises a lot. Ben, Lizzie and Farley now know exactly what they want from a truly modern motor caravan, which is why they are currently parked in north Wales, not far from Snowdon, next to a vast hanger inside which Welsh engineers and craftsmen are building them a spanking- new MCL Motorhome to their precise specifications. It is costing £250,000, and they will be dis- appointed if someone doesn’t hail it as the most advanced motor caravan ever.

It will have Memory-Map navigation, which provides a constantly moving full-colour Ordnance Survey map with the driver’s vehicle always centre screen, a video camera to view the road behind, another computer and even more powerful communications, reinforced by DataStorm two-way satellite broadband. The scenario goes like this. A customer rings and asks to speak to Ben or Lizzie. A secretary in Nottingham says “One moment please”, and puts the call straight through to wherever in the world Ben and Lizzie happen to be, thanks to Voipfone internet tele-phony. Spain? Belarus? Scun-thorpe? The world has just grown a little smaller again.

There will also some endearingly old-fashioned equipment on board. Tilt the bed up and some steep stairs are revealed. Go down them and, next to the washer-dryer and the shower, you will find two nice, everyday bicycles. They will be neatly slotted between two specially moulded water tanks, very snug. “I love cycling,” says Ben.

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