Adria Alpina Colorado caravan

A twin-bed tourer with head-turning looks, a supersized kitchen, a luxuriously large lounge, and lighting designs that are sure to impress

Words: Val Chapman  Photography: Richard Chapman

The Adria Alpina Colorado

Looking for a caravan with single beds? You have a choice of 11 in the UK market. All but two are on single axles. Spec levels and weights range from the lightweight Adria Adora Seine, with functionality at its heart, upwards.

The longest, the heaviest, the widest – and the one with the biggest price tag – is also made by Adria. The Alpina Colorado ticks luxury boxes aplenty – and the box marked ‘spacious’ gets a very  big, bold tick. For this is an eight-foot-wide tourer with an immense lounge that has seating all of the way around the caravan, a generously sized kitchen, and a lovely, big bedroom.

The Colorado is an established model. It first appeared on a single axle, then Adria made it one of only two caravans in its portfolio to ride on twin axles.

Each year, spec has increased and subtle styling changes keep the twin-bed-layout Colorado in the forefront of caravan fashion. 

The 2023 Colorado – which we reviewed in the showroom of Adria’s biggest UK retailer, Barnsdale  Leisure, close to Pontefract – is a gorgeous home-from-home caravan. Its size (2.46m wide and 8.29m from hitch head to tail lights) gives it apartment-like ambience. For this reason, it’s a popular choice for buyers looking for a caravan to leave on a site for a whole season. 

While its length means it isn’t in the agile tourers bracket, we know from personal experience that  this giant twin-axle’s road characteristics are predictable and stable; a great all-purpose caravan, then.

The spec

It has Alde heating, an on-board water tank, a 140-litre fridge/freezer, and even an integrated step. And the beds have sun lounger-style sections at the pillow end so that they can be turned into daytime recliners. 

It all adds up to premium status. And there’s more. A lot more. Sliding doors divide the bedroom from the rest of the caravan. With them closed, the kitchen and lounge take on a super-cosy aspect. With them open, you feel the benefit of the Colorado’s apartment-scale size.

Lighting

Alpinas have an ultra-sophisticated zonal lighting design with an equally sophisticated system of controls. Banks of switches alongside each bed give you options on lighting levels in the bedroom. This ranges from bright – with the three track spotlights in the roof, and spotlights above each bed – to soft lighting created by using just the concealed overlocker lights. The bedroom lights can also be controlled from the panel above the door. 

A neat lamp sits on the cupboard top by the door. Actually, it could sit anywhere, for this light charges automatically when it’s in its recess on the cabinet top, and can be moved to any other surface you may choose. You can also choose how bright it is; with three selectable levels. A strip of bright light provides task lighting over the kitchen. Three spotlights are on a track above the lounge; like those in the bedroom, the positions of each of the lights can be moved along the track.

There’s a light at floor level, running along the base of the front seating section, and a switch on the over-door panel for it; the light is low enough in level to be left on overnight if you wish. And the awning light is a strip of very bright light that runs within the entire length of the awning rail, ensuring that your Colorado will turn heads after dark just as it will in daylight.

This caravan is so stacked with lighting refinements that illumination must rate as one of its top attention grabbers. 

The kitchen

Every area of the Colorado is large, especially the kitchen. With the worktop extension hinged up,

the kitchen surface is a staggering 1.96m long. It’s not just the amount of surface space that is significant; it’s how it’s designed that makes it super practical.

The three-burner hob is inline, so there is a 9cm-deep section of surface forward of it. Alongside the sink is a 10cm section of worktop that’s ideal for placing the things that you use most often, like pepper, salt and olive oil. 

The wooden chopping board cover for the sink ensures that this area can become part of the work surface. And, forward of the hob, there’s a 65cm stretch of worktop. And there’s more. The cabinet top opposite the kitchen measures 60cm by 55cm. Cooking, Colorado style, would be just as enjoyable as in a domestic kitchen, we decided during our review day.

The Colorado excels on storage, too. The cabinet by the door contains three shelves, 38cm wide and 54cm deep. The table is stored in this cabinet and there’s a slim space alongside it, for cereal boxes, perhaps. The fridge, aft of this cabinet, is Thetford’s slimline model and there are small lockers above and below it. 

On the fore end of the kitchen, a door reveals three pull-out shelves, each 42cm by 22cm. On the other side of the oven and grill are two enormous drawers –71cm wide – and a  drop-down-doored cabinet. 

The top drawer contains a cutlery tray. All of the drawers and units have very refined roll-catches, as do the top cabinets. One of the lockers over the kitchen contains fitments for plates and mugs; it’s 77cm wide, so plenty of space. The cabinet alongside contains the microwave.

Not content with giving the Colorado an exceptional amount of kitchen storage and surface space, Adria’s designers give the Colorado an ingenious system of small, movable shelves and hooks that clip onto six smart steel rails on the kitchen wall. You can move the positions of the shelves and hooks according to your needs.

There are also two more rails in the washroom so the choice of shelf or no shelf is up to you.

The lounge

The U-shape of the lounge seating puts the Colorado firmly into the bracket of caravans designed for entertaining. There’s plenty of seating space, plus 38cm by 75cm table hinges up from the front wall when it’s time for coffees, or drinks and nibbles.

And, like everything about the Colorado, it’s beautifully and robustly constructed. We’d happily enjoy many hours here.

Supremely specced, with a lighting design that’s guaranteed to impress – including an automatically charging movable lamp – the Colorado’s space and luxury ambience ensures its appeal to discerning buyers who want top-notch styling as well as robust build quality everywhere. Its culinary zone is surely one of the best in any caravan. And its value? We think it amply justifies its price tag and stands up well amid tourers in the above-£40,000 sector.