Bailey Pegasus Black Edition Brindisi caravan review

A max-width, single-axle tourer with a lounge layout that is unique to Bailey – and a price that’s just a pip under £30,000

First impressions & layout

The Brindisi’s transverse bed and rear shower room layout places it among Britain’s most popular caravan layouts – and with two important assets. That’s its MTPLM, a modest 1,546kg, and its width, 2.43m, putting it among the growing-in-popularity sector of maximum-width caravans.

The Brindisi first appeared in 2016. Then three years later it grew in width – and therefore in appeal. 

This caravan’s unique-to-Bailey lounge layout gives it a standout character. It’s a semi L-shape, semi C-shape that it shares with only one other caravan, the twin-axle Bailey Pegasus Black Edition Bologna.

How efficient, in terms of both comfort and practicality, would this layout prove to be? Usually, we have a day to assess caravans for our reviews – this time, though, we had just over a week, for Bailey wanted us to do a lengthy evaluation on this super-popular tourer. Plenty of time, then, to get to know the efficiency of this Bailey-invention lounge configuration. 

We’re in Somerset, at Dulhorn Farm Holiday Park, close to the village of Lympsham and only a short drive from the coast at Brean Sands and Weston-Super-Mare. It’s a working farm site (beef and sheep) but we don’t get distracted by the spectacular Belted Galloway cattle, for all our attention is on the Brindisi.

Lounge, dining & comfort

We begin our evaluation in the lounge. The seats across the front and along the offside are 63cm wide. The one on the nearside is 49cm wide and just 70cm long, with a cabinet (38cm wide) alongside it. There’s a wireless charging pad on the top of the cabinet and TV connections, plus a bracket, on the wall.

And an Avtex television is among the list of optional extras. This can be purchased either through a Bailey retailer or via Prima Leisure (Bailey’s accessories division). 

When you want to turn the lounge into a dining room, you get out the table from under the bed – and discover that it’s a massive 80cm by 96cm. We found, when raising it, the bed’s supporting struts don’t keep it up when a duvet and pillows are on it, so it’s a two-person task to get the table in and out. (It rests on four brackets set within the bed frame structure.)

This layout – in common with all L-shape variants – doesn’t provide a pull-out snack table, so every time you eat you need to get out the table. We quickly discovered that best practice is to leave the table up in the lounge for most of the time. We love its size – and the fact that four can sit around it with ease, unlike true L-shaped lounges. So, in meal-mode, the Brindisi excels. 

And comfort? The upholstery is sprung construction, so feels resilient and gives us the impression that it would be durable in the long term.

Our review Brindisi is fitted with the standard upholstery called Lima. It’s worth saying that Bailey offers three upholstery options, two of which are, in Bailey’s words “pet and child proof”, with stain-resistant properties, and this is one of them.

The Brindisi comes with a Sonos portable speaker. Our review was our first opportunity to experience the sound quality of the Sonos speaker – and we have to say it is superb.

Kitchen & live-in practicality

The current trend in caravan kitchen design is for L-shapes – and Bailey’s Pegasus range joined the L-shape fashion with the arrival of the Black Edition. 

The ‘peninsula’ (Bailey’s word) section measures a metre long and 42cm wide. It forms a natural partition between the kitchen and the lounge, giving both a slightly separate feel, and accommodates one of the kitchen cabinets, 41cm wide, with a cutlery drawer above it.

The cabinet under the sink is 25cm deep and 70cm wide, reaching into the peninsula section. But the door to this cabinet is only 29cm wide, so we found that reaching for items at the back of the cabinet was a tad difficult. This was the only (and small) negative comment that the kitchen attracted, though. 

A nice touch is the two hooks on the end of the ‘peninsula’ for oven gloves and cloths. Above, alongside the microwave, is a double-doored cabinet, 68cm wide, containing a shelf.

And opposite, above the fridge, is another, smaller cabinet, 47cm wide and 23cm deep. Here, there’s a strong clue to this kitchen’s efficiency: an extra working surface, measuring 56cm by 59cm, as we were to discover…

This was what Bailey calls a ‘live-in test’ and that means we can actually use the kitchen. We had ample opportunity to find out how efficient this kitchen is and how best to use the space. So what better recipe to put it to its first test than one using the ingredients for which Somerset is famous – cider?

We turned to one of Somerset’s famous cider makers for this recipe, simply called Somerset Chicken in Cider, using Thatcher’s Gold cider, plus mushrooms, bay leaves, fresh thyme, onion, a dash of mustard and cream. Brown the chicken, cook the onions and the casserole dish and the hob would pretty much do the rest. And it did. 

Next, another cider-based recipe – this time fondue, and following inspiration from a Cheddar cheese manufacturer, Wyke Farms. Garlic, Thatcher’s Vintage cider, mature, extra mature and vintage Cheddar from Wyke, plus cornflour. A retro recipe brought firmly up to date with a Somerset twist. 

As we continued to put the kitchen through its paces, it didn’t take us long to decide we loved this kitchen for its two-surface efficiency and also, as daylight faded, the bright strip of light shining down from under the top lockers.

Bedroom & washroom 

Lighting got our praise in the bedroom, too, with white light beaming down from ceiling level on both sides of the room. Pegasus is two levels down from Bailey’s flagship range yet there is plenty of luxury ambience here.

Window-side panels are beautifully padded, the bedhead is deeply upholstered and the lovely corner dressing table cabinet has a good amount of surface. Shelves are alongside the cabinet and a shelf runs over the dressing table area and all of the way along the wall above the window. 

The Brindisi borrows a feature from two of its higher-spec Alicanto Grande cousins: the capacious corner wardrobe with full-length mirror and 50cm of hanging width plus a shelf area beneath, and three small shelves along one side. 

The double bed is kingsize, at 1.9m by 1.53m, and with two 77cm-wide top lockers plus shelves on each side. 

The lounge converts easily to a double bed (you pull out the base from under the front sofa; a quick and easy task). The bed is 2.2m by 1.33m

So, night time comfort easily passed our live-in test – and so did the shower room. We love its large, oval backlit mirror, its two good-sized cabinets – and a simple, yet highly efficient, feature: four hooks, for towels or dressing gowns, neatly set into a recess. 

The unique lounge shape won continual praise throughout our test experience. We quickly got used to extracting and replacing the table under the bed. We love the quantity of kitchen surface that made cooking an easy pleasure. And the Black Edition styling that brings dark grey as well as jet black into the décor gives the Brindisi a chic, smart, slightly dramatic elegance atmosphere. We love it!