Bailey Pageant Bretagne

The Bailey Pageant Bretagne is Which Caravan magazine’s Caravan of the Year for 2009. It’s a family-layout tourer with bunk beds and a dining area at the rear. We take the Bretagne, with two adults and one 12-year-old, to a remote loch on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula in Scotland

There are force eight gales on the A66 and signs banning high sided vehicles - it’s hardly the best time to be towing a caravan all the way from Lincolnshire to the Highlands, behind a car that only just has the kerb weight to tow it legally.
With each gust I feel a tremor so the Skoda Superb slows to a safer-feeling 50mph. Still, the only motorbike on the road is crawling along at 40mph so I’m not the only one with tense shoulders and white knuckles on this beautiful, but exposed stretch of motorway.

The two-litre Skoda Superb has an unladen weight of 1513kg according to the handbook, its maximum tow weight is 1500kg and the maximum technically permissible laden mass of the Bailey is 1483kg

 It’s reassuring to know, as we head up the almost equally windy M6, that we have a hitch head stabiliser and AL-KO’s ATC stability system, which come as part of the standard package. Even though the driver can’t detect what infinitesimal adjustments to braking the ATC system is making, on high-wind days like this it’s enough to feel what would, without ATC, be the early stages of snaking and relax when it doesn’t develop.

At Tebay we discover that the site is a perfect stop over, next to a service station on the M6. A farm shop at the service station sells delicious Cumberland sausages, black pudding and other delicious temptations.

Our first night and first meal in the Bailey go off reasonably well considering that we’ve not unpacked and are living out of the car boot. The Bailey’s microwave gives us a surprisingly passable meal of celeriac mash and baked beans.

Bailey’s Senator Carolina was the first caravan I tested for this magazine, back in 2007, and it was the first British-built caravan to have a triple bunk arrangement for kids. The Pageant is a very similar caravan at around £1800 less. That’s why it was judged best caravan in Which Caravan’s 2009 Awards. I was keen to find out how well it worked for my particular family of three.

Twelve-year-old George is in the middle bunk, and clambers quite comfortably aboard, despite being 5ft 6in tall. Our labrador has her bed on the floor underneath him and we’ve raised the slats and mattress of the bottom bunk so she can have the floor. You have to crawl under the ladder to fix the strap in place, which is a bit awkward; but the resulting space is brilliant – no more stepping over the dog. We’ve bundled spare cushions from the front dinette onto the top bunk - it blocks out a little light from the top window but spares us from wrestling with the main front dinette slats to tuck cushions away there.

Next day, and we’re off to Scotland. In a few hours the Bailey is over the five-minute Corran Ferry crossing and is on its way to our small site on the banks of Loch Sunart.

Day One at Resipole Farm, we get to find out how the caravan really works for us and it begins well, with a beautiful sight of the sea loch through the Bailey’s three front windows.

The Bretagne’s front dinette, kitchen and washroom might work well as a self-contained two berth. At the end you have a solid, laminated door which slides across, creating a separate bedroom for four children, complete with ample overhead lockers, a corner bookshelf, a table, two sofas and a window to each of the three bunks.

We’ve taken a controversial decision to allow George a flat screen TV and XBox 360 on this trip.

So four of the berths are George’s and two are ours. It kind of works. As the week progresses, we find we can barely hear the sound of battle when the door’s shut (and hats off to Bailey for making this a proper door rather than the fabric, concertina-affair offered by some manufacturers); meanwhile the Xbox and TV take up the bedroom table. George is disappointed to discover that there is only one power point in this room but a double adapter borrowed from Resipole’s site shop comes to our rescue.

A downside to this arrangement is that the rear dinette table is permanently occupied. The front area’s small table is a conventional hinged section on top of  the chest of drawers; the main table is substantial, and unique in design, with hinged sides so that, even though it’s wide it can be stowed in a slot within the depth of the kitchen units. As the week progresses, the front of the caravan becomes a cheery, adult area, with the sun coming in over That View, small piles of books, cups of tea, wine glasses. Meanwhile the back of the caravan quickly becomes a dark pit of untidiness.

This dualistic approach falls down on the evening we decide to watch a family DVD. The back dinette doesn’t have space for adults to relax and watch television so we move to the front. Chocolate and hot drinks lined up, and we discover the snag - where on earth do you put a TV and DVD at the front of the caravan? The small lift up flap at one side of the right hand sofa doesn’t have the strength or size to hold our rather large and heavy flat screen unit; it’s designed for very small sets. The kitchen worktop doesn’t allow enough space. The front chest of drawers, then? Great idea, except that it has no power points.
 In the absence of these, we get by with trailing leads.

We don’t end up using the washroom a great deal. The site showers are great, and the Bretagne’s shower is one which extends from the sink tap. Using it means wrapping yourself in a damp shower curtain in the  space between sink and loo. This is not a caravan you choose for its swanky washing facilities – that would be missing the point. But it does seem a shame that the vanity unit takes up so much space – a simple wall-mounted sink would make the compartment much more usable for bigger folk.

The Bretagne’s kitchen works really well. There’s an inevitable clash in the aisles when we’re cooking and somebody wants to open the loo door, but that’s because the central kitchen makes such a natural separation point between back and front dinettes; I think the pluses outweigh the minuses here.

Otherwise the kitchen’s not an area you’d want to fault. There’s a four-burner hob, a Spinflo oven and grill, and a 115-litre Dometic fridge, which is as large as you’d expect in a caravan at this price level and of this layout. There’s a small amount of workspace between the hob and sink, with more provided by the glass cover of the hob. Best of all, the run of overhead lockers extends your storage space by as much as you need; so long as you don’t mind using part of your lounge space for food.

The Bailey Pageant Bretagne has well-planned family accommodation in two distinct areas. There’s a space for a dog’s bed out of the way in the bunk area. Only the shortage of power points in the lounge lets it down.