Full review

There’s an emphasis, it seems, on new family caravan layouts. Not just from Explorer Group (which brings in four for 2015) but from other manufacturers, too. The new arrival in the Elddis Avanté range takes that emphasis on catering for families to extreme; the rear seating area, traditionally thought of as the kids’ zone, is longer than the front lounge.

The 564’s twin lounges are almost identical in layout. They both have chests of two drawers and a cabinet beneath, with pull-put table tops. They both have six top lockers. They’re both capable of being made into bedrooms with double or single beds. The key difference is in the length of the settees. Those at the rear are 1.84m long; the front ones are slightly shorter, at 1.7m.

This creates lots of options on how you want to use the caravan in both day and night mode. Which gives the newcomer Avanté a very wide appeal. You can eat, lounge, watch television, make single beds, make double beds, in both or either end. The more we envisaged the 564 with parents and two kids on board the more we liked its versatility. And the further into the teen years the kids get, the more important the versatility becomes, as teenagers really do need plenty of their own space.

It’s a relatively modest length, yet although it has a long rear lounge, it also has a separate shower compartment in the central offside washroom…
 

Showering

When you step into the shower room, straight away you notice three features. Two are about design. The third is about robust practicality. The design features are a bright concealed light above the wall cabinet, and attractive wallcovering that’s textured, in a horizontal pattern. This wallcovering is also in the rest of the caravan, but it’s in the washroom that it’s most noticeable, simply because there’s a lot of it in a confined space.

The practical point is the design of the shower door. It folds into two sections when it’s open and runs in a track at both the top and the base. When you step inside the shower and close it, the two sections run into place along the tracks with a clunk; it’s an impressively robust structure.

The total showering space is 62cm x 80cm, which includes the wheel arch. Think of this as a shelf for the shampoo bottle, perhaps. Or maybe a seat for a little caravanner while he or she is being helped with the showering process. And there is enough space for mum or dad to stand outside the shower to administer the soap and water. It’s another pointer to the strong appeal of this caravan.
 

Sleeping

It’s on the subject of sleeping, though, that the 564 really excels. We think the 1.84m settees will almost always be used as single beds. It’s good to have the option of making a double bed here, though. And it actually gives you an extra berth; three children could sleep parallel here, with the shorter child in the central bed (40cm is taken up by the chest of drawers). This flexibility makes it a caravan to consider if you sometimes take a cousin or friend of your children on holiday.

Parents of average height could use the settees as single beds. The double, though, is made up in quick time and with less effort than in Avantés of previous years. That’s because the upholstery sections are significantly lighter. Sprung upholstery has been replaced for 2015 by a newly-developed upholstery construction called Ozio. It’s a sandwich of two layers of vertically-aligned polyester fibres, with a central section of dense foam.
 

Storage

Wherever there are settees there is good storage, and the 564 acquits itself well in the duvet and sleeping bag storage department. Full-length hinge-down doors make access easy. The top locker count is high, at 12. The two above the front window are especially deep, reaching 38cm into the front line of the caravan. Only three of them have shelves, though, but the overall capacity of the head-height storage area is surely enough for the needs of four. The two above the front window are especially deep, reaching 38cm into the front line of the caravan.

We love the 564’s wardrobe design, with two 50cm-wide rails, one above the other. Hanging depths are 77cm and 90cm. The dining table is stored in here…
 

Dining

The table slides into wedge-shaped guides and is held in place by a turn-clip, on the rear wall of the wardrobe. It’s easy to get out and ease back into position.

The subject of dining highlights another area of flexibility about the 564. Family dining can happen at either end of the caravan. And the pull-out table tops above the drawer units create tables which measure 77cm deep and 64cm wide. That’s ample for two, so you have the option of eating together at the large table or two at each end; that’s ideal for breakfast, perhaps. This really is a caravan in which you can live in your own style.
 

Lounging

Feet-up relaxing space is available for all four occupants. Not many caravans can come close on that topic.
The new Ozio upholstery feels firmly comfortable. And the plain, pale cream upholstery teamed with pale fawn curtains and cushions enhances the open-plan look of the layout.

The front settees have armrests at both ends. The one on the rear of the nearside seat has an extending section that slides between the upholstery and the wooden seat frame, so that it can’t slide off. Simple. And brilliant.

There are television brackets in both lounges. In the front, mains, 12-volt power and aerial sockets are close to the bracket, on the wall. In the rear, they’re neatly hidden under a top locker. There are a total of five mains sockets; one at the front nearside corner of the lounge, two in the kitchen and one alongside the front lounge TV bracket.
 

Kitchen

A mains hob plus three burners, an oven with separate grill, and a Daewoo microwave with timers for specific foods… The 564 has all the cooking equipment you’d expect. The sink is large and circular, and finished in black enamel to match the hob. We think this surface would be exceptionally durable, surviving for many years’ use without stains.

There’s an 87cm stretch of kitchen surface when the sink cover is in place. That’s sufficient for making meals for four, we think. But a hinged extension would have made kitchen function easier, and would have impinged very little on space in the rear lounge.

Upper storage space will accommodate packets and tableware of all sorts of dimensions. The locker is 80cm long and 30cm deep, with a height of 43cm. Racks for two mugs and eight plates are in the forward sector. The capacity of this top cabinet is important, for the lower cabinet, between the fridge and the oven, is comparatively small, at 28cm wide. It’s well capable of containing tall items, though. There’s a drawer above the cabinet. It’s perfect for cooking utensils and a second, shallower drawer, to the left, is ideal for cutlery.
 

Towing

Avantés are equipped with AL-KO’s ATC automatic electronic stability control system. Increasingly it’s a standard feature of caravans, which we applaud; anything which enhances safety margin is a great idea and many say it should be standard on all caravans. That said, on our brief test tow, the ATC remained happily dormant and the 564 bobbed along nicely, just as we’d expected.

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