Bailey Olympus 530-4

The Bailey Olympus 530-4, at just 1275kg MTPLM, is along the lightest fixed-bed tourers of its year that your can find. And it has the bonus of a full-width shower room

It must be hard to be a Bailey Olympus in 2012 – like being the second-to-smallest of four children; you’re not the smartest in the family; neither are you the smallest. People fall for the sophisticated togetherness of Unicorn and Pegasus, and find Orion cute and quirky. But who are you exactly, beyond being lighter and cheaper than the big boys and more conservative, less out there than your little brother?
Olympus has tended to be a pragmatic choice rather than one from the heart, and Bailey has given it an update in an attempt to address this. The colours inside are all changed and there is a new layout.
The 530-4 transfers across from the old-style Olympus range, with the new look, and few changes to its layout.
 

Showering

The shower room goes right across the back of the caravan but is smaller than you might expect. Go through the door, which is a proper domestic-style one with the kind of doorhandle you might find in a new house. Turn to the right and you’ll see a shower cubicle fully lined with plastic and with folding doors. According to our tape measure the shower enclosure is 75cm wide; the size of many you’ll find in houses. The shower itself has a single-action tap – tilt for on, twist for temperature, and is the kind that keeps water running continuously rather than in short bursts. So far so good, but the gap between the big white sink and the wall opposite is only just wide enough to allow you to open the door of the vanity unit under that sink. There’s a long mirror, but unfortunately the only place for it is about 30cm to the left of anywhere you might stand to get a full-length view. There’s a decent amount of storage space in this small room – three open shelves and two shelves in the vanity unit, plus a corner shelf high above the loo, ideal for storing towels; this shelf is tucked away in the corner in such a way that we don’t think even the tallest person is at risk of bumping their head. There are two towel hooks, plus two dressing gown hooks on the wall.
 

Sleeping

The double bed is a 135cm wide, 193cm long one. The mattress is firm, and there’s a comfortable head rest. If you’re the one sleeping on the wall side you get a shelf for a mug, and there’s a hatchway through to the living area and sideboard at your feet. I could imagine this working very well for Sunday papers and breakfast in bed, though there’s nowhere obvious for the other sleeper to put their mug.
The bedroom is bright and airy, with a large window to one side, but, as a space, it’s marred by a large wardrobe facing the bottom of the bed; when you open the wardrobe doors, space is very tight. This always tends to be an issue with caravans which have double beds of this kind – the only really successful answer we’ve seen to it is in some of this year’s Elddis models, which have taken the wardrobe out of the bedroom and replaced it with a dressing table.
At the front you can make up two singles or a double bed. As singles they are 1.58m and 1.6m long, so you’re going to need to make up the front as a double bed if adults are sleeping here. The bed makes up via slats that pull out from under the front of the U-shaped sofa in the traditional manner, making a bed 1.95m long by 1.58m wide – a true king’s size.
 

Storage

There’s a lot of space for kit, considering this is a modest-sized lightweight layout. Olympus, like all Bailey’s ranges, are blunter-nosed than typical caravans of the last two decades, and this gives a lot of depth in the overhead lockers at the front. Even though they’re large, there’s plenty of headroom to the front of these caravans so you don’t tend to find you’re bumping your head on them (something we found was an issue with 2011 Sprites).
We would have liked to see shelving in these cupboards, to help us make the most of the cavernous space. There are shelves in some of the other overhead lockers, but there’s none in the largest locker above the bed.
The massive space under the bed is easy to get to and has an exterior door, with a plastic tray giving you a kind of wet-locker for boots and picnic chairs that have been out in the rain.
There are some shortcomings. Another shelf in the tallest kitchen cupboard would be very welcome (see kitchens, below), and it would be so easy to make the sideboard that houses the Truma blown air heater more functional. At the top there’s a small, useful locker above a microwave, then under the natural TV position there’s a little hole for DVD players and games systems – we’ve seen rivals do a better job of media cabinets – the cubby hole seems a little stingy and in our test caravan the media shelf and TV shelf above it, share a single powerpoint. We’d also like to see a hole at the back of the TV shelf, for connecting wires.
On the plus side, Bailey’s Alu-tech caravans were among the first to have a rigid, well-constructed door to the front gas locker; this is narrower than usual, leaving space for two other small lockers, one to either side of the front of the caravan. Use them for chocks, for toilet chemicals, walking boots; anything you like.
Then there is that wardrobe. While it does restrict the corridor, it also gives you masses of space for clothes and boots. There are eight huge shelving sections here, as well as a hanging rail.
 

Dining

The lounge, with its U-shaped sofa arrangement, offers plenty of space for you to be sociable – five people might comfortably sit around the table. The lighting at the front is on the subtle side, which would work well if you’re looking to eat a meal in subdued lighting.
Our one niggle is that the dining table store is quite a narrow space, and its access door butts against the side of the fridge, so we can imagine people getting frustrated and perhaps scuffing their fingers as they get the table out or put it away.
 

Lounging

There’s a lot we like about the lounge of this Olympus. The U-shaped seating works very well with the deep windowsills of these Alu-tech caravans – we don’t find we miss having a front chest of drawers because books and drinks can sit on this sill.
You will want a table lamp if you choose one of these caravans; there are four little spotlights for reading, but with the combined force of three or four glow worms, who just happen to be close to each other.
 

Kitchen

The 530-4 passes our cornflake packet test, and our Ribena bottle test. Both fit beautifully into a tall cupboard under the sink. They pass it a bit too well, in fact, and I’d love to see another shelf to make better use of the space.
Work surfaces are a beautiful high gloss, and there’s a very respectable amount of free surface between the four-burner hob and the large, rectangular sink. Olympus caravans have a similar run of overhead lockers to more expensive Baileys, and these are the only overhead cupboards in this caravan to have positive locking to keep your stuff secure when you’re on the road. Half of the lockers are well-equipped with plate racks and other fittings, while in the other half the space is available for food. The shelf height only allows you to store things a little taller than tin-can height here, but we think dividing the storage into small compartments like this will help enormously when it comes to keeping the caravan tidy.
The microwave is opposite, above the TV. The fridge is a modest 107 litre Thetford, with push-button ignition, but that fits with the needs of a couple on holiday in this caravan.
 

Towing

It’s relatively small, it’s a single axle, so easy to manoeuvre on a campsite, and it’s light enough to tow with a large estate car. Just make sure you’re not tempted to load heavy items under the bed, aft of the axle, which could ruin the excellent balance of this caravan – a characteristic noted by our editor Val when she took it out on its test tow.
 

The Bailey Olympus 530-4 is a well-specified fixed-bed buy with all you need and with light weight in its favour