Coachman Amara 565/4

Coachman Amara 565/4s have twin beds; importantly, the bed area is well separated from the kitchen-lounging space

With the market now awash with twin-bed layouts, each one has to fight its corner using ever more detailed tactics. Aside from the obvious weight and price considerations, choosing a caravan of this layout is becoming more and more difficult – simply because we’re spoiled for choice.
Within each weight-price bracket there are a few that stand out from the crowd – and it’s the details that matter. The Coachman Amara 565/4 is one such caravan, with a raft of relatively minor details that add up to a cracking package of modern styling and a good level of equipment.
One of this caravan’s distinguishing features, though, counts as fundamental, rather than detail; it’s the way in which the bedroom is separated from the living area. The wardrobe on the nearside, and the prominent rear wall of the kitchen opposite, create a clear division that makes the bedroom area into a truly separate room.
More detail to notice: There’s a drawer set into the base of one of the beds (that’s a feature unique to Coachman). Strips of lighting are set into the top frame of each of the head-height lockers. Voile curtains are in bedroom. The microwave is in a cabinet with a top-hinged door, so it blends into the furniture. The hob includes a mains hotplate. The shower room sink is Belfast-style, wide and deep.
 

Showering

The shower room gets detail that counts, too, apart from the Belfast sink. Seven small shelves, three to the right of the sink cabinet and four more alongside the mirror, are practical – and add style, too. A long shelf runs above the window. Towels get good accommodation, with a wide bar, a loop and a hook (or is this meant for your coats? It little matters, it's useful anyway. Puzzlingly, the window is clad in two blinds. There’s a roller blind (and fly-screen) and also a Venetian-style blind. Even though we can’t quite see the reasoning behind this, it's a nice touch.
The shower rose is a slim cylindrical design. There’s a shelf for shampoos in the unit on which the shower is mounted. The one-piece door has the Coachman hallmark five-band wave design across the centre – simply stylish! Its floor-to-ceiling magnetic catch makers sure it will never come open on tow.
Floor space is generous, and lighting, from three lights set into the ceiling and one more in the shower, is more than adequate.
 

Sleeping

It’s the sleeping department of this caravan that will draw you to consider it initially, presuming you’ve already decided twin beds are your preferred option.
So you’ll be looking carefully at bed length; these are 1.88m and 1.83m long. Sprung mattresses create good comfort.
One aspect of practicality we like about this bedroom is the mirror, on the nearside wall, and the proximity of a mains socket, set into the bed base at the pillow end; in this caravan you don’t have to stretch your hairdryer cable to the shower room mirror.
We also like the drawer, set in to the offside bed base; perfect for socks and other small items.
Drop-down access to the under-bed spaces is on both sides and there is exterior access on the nearside.
When you want to partition the bedroom off from the living space, you lower a Venetian blind that’s set into an aperture on the wall to the rear of kitchen, and pull a pleated blind across the corridor.
A double bed makes in the lounge by extracting the centre section of the base from under the offside settee; it stands on two aluminium legs and pulls out smoothly.
 

Storage

With two great caverns under the beds, storage will never be a problem in the 565. The wardrobe gives you full hanging depth and there are two deep drawers beneath it. The nearside settee storage space has front access; the offside one has top access only because of the bed base construction.
Three front drawers are in the front centre unit. Amaras have head-height lockers across the front of the lounge, unlike caravans with feature roof lights in this position. Two of the four side top lockers have shelves. One has metal clips to hold two wine bottles and six glasses. The fourth locker contains the radio-CD player, with a shelf space above it.
Bedroom top-locker storage consists of three lockers on each side; two have shelves. And there’s a two-shelf unit above the pillow-end of each bed; perfect for your books.
 

Dining

The dining table for four slides into a cabinet on the forward side of the wardrobe; its top creates a shelf by the door. For minor meals, though, the pull-out top of the chest of drawers would be fine for two. It’s level with the cabinet top when it's extended. That means that the whole area can be used as a table - and it's the same width as the cabinet, at 63cm wide; with a table as good as this, we think most couples will rarely use the freestanding table.
 

Lounging

The settees aren’t full stretch-out length but you can put your feet up for kick-back relaxing. And you can also regard the beds as extra feet-up relaxing places, especially as there is a bracket (and aerial plus 12 and 240v sockets) for your television on the rear wall of the wardrobe. There’s also a bracket in the lounge, on the front wall of the wardrobe here. The connections include satellite points, and two mains sockets; two more sockets are in the lounge.
There are two outlets in the lounge for the warm air generated by the Truma Combi heating system; both are at the front end, so your toes are guaranteed to be cosy. A third outlet faces to the rear, mounted into the base of the nearside settee, in the doorway. (Two more outlets are in the bedroom and shower room.).
This system delivers 4kw of output on gas and 1.8kw on electricity; it has a programmable timing system for both space heating and hot water.
If you’d like your lounge to have more seating space, you can opt for wrap-around seating, at no extra cost. In the unlikely event of you disliking the hessian-weave seating fabric, teamed with four scatter cushions employing shades of lemony yellow, there’s an alternative fabric at £250 extra. For us? We wouldn’t change a thing, for this lounge looks and feels a superbly relaxing environment.
 

Kitchen

The Amara 565’s kitchen features something now seldom found in tourers: a proper recessed drainer. You lose surface space compared with the clip-on plastic drainers more usually found, because the sink and drainer are covered by a single glass top. But with the glass down, there is a 90cm-wide kitchen surface. To get the best out of this kitchen, you’d wash your vegetables, then close the glass lid, then get your chopping board out and get on with the cooking.
The microwave is hidden from view (that’s a Coachman feature), it's a sophisticated model, with automatic timer buttons for items including popcorn, jacket potatoes, pizza, frozen vegetables and hot drinks.
The mains hotplate enables you to economise on gas, which is important when you’re away from the UK, in countries where Calor gas is not obtainable.
The two cabinets are top-hinged, which means your head never collides with an open door. One of these cabinets contains fitment for four mugs, the other has a rack for dishes and plates. Lower kitchen storage is comparatively limited, with one 33cm-wide cabinet, containing a shelf. Space below the shelf is compromised by the main gas taps. The cutlery drawer is of ample size, though.
 

Towing

At the start of the 565’s test tow, we remarked that it felt noticeably light considering its 7.51m total length; the power drain on our 2.5-litre Kia Sorento seemed negligible even on slight uphill stretches. Even without paying attention to trim and load, the 565 towed evenly and stably. There’s no ATC stability control system on board, though; Amaras are so well equipped that sometimes it’s easy to forget that this is Coachman’s lowest spec range and possibly expect more than you get. ATC is an option, though at £495.

Assuming twin beds are for you, the Coachman Amara 565 is one for your shortlist on the basis of its spacious layout, its pale woodwork and fabrics that create a light modern look, and its nice, refined touches that give it character.