Dethleffs Nomad 545 DMB

The bed’s at the front: We can’t think of any other caravan that lets you sleep under the stars

Dethleffs Nomad 545 DMB

Continental caravans are brilliant. They’re stubborn in their insistance that ovens should be small, showers should be tiny or absent, microwaves should be missing, and the door should be on the wrong side (the road side in the UK). Layouts range from the conventional to the inspired, via the downright challenging. Sadly the unfavourable exchange rate squeezed out a lot of imported caravans, starting in 2007, with notable exceptions including Adria, Freedom and T@b. Now that our caravan width limit has been upgraded by law from 2.3m to 2.55m it makes sense to look overseas to see what our European cousins do with all that extra space they’ve been used to having for years. So it’s great news that Lowdham Leisureworld in Nottingham and Huddersfield has resumed importing Dethleffs models from Germany. Lowdhams stocks three current Dethleffs models: a conventional fixed bed caravan, a similar model with fixed single beds, and the Nomad 545, which is something different altogether. It’s got the bed in the front window. Perhaps we should say that again, because it’s so unusual: the island bed, with a wardrobe to each side, is at the front of the caravan, so your very best view could be the one you get while relaxing in bed with a cuppa. A brilliant excuse, if you need one, to stay in bed just a little longer every morning. To understand this it’s worth knowing that many continental campsites pitch differently to UK ones. It’s not necessarily the norm to have the front of the caravan facing the view. In the case of the 545 DMB it makes perfect sense that, as you sit in the lounge that spans the centre of the caravan, you have large windows around you in almost every direction.

Showering
Caravanners over the water tend to rely on site shower facilities, so this corner shower room is a use-it-if-you-need-it affair. In other words it’s quite small. The toilet is the kind that swivels to allow you to sit diagonally and gain some leg room, but the sink is very close by and it does feel cramped. The shower isn’t a fully-sealed unit of the kind you’d expect in one of this year’s British caravans, but it comes quite close to this in that it has plastic panelled walls and ceiling. There is a chance that water could get underneath the side panels, but we’d expect it to be slight, since the water tray below that is deep. The shower doors fold inwards, reducing what is quite a small cubicle. However, the styling of this shower room is superb. Towel rails on the door give masses of hanging space. A huge mirror takes up the whole wall, allowing you to stand at the caravan door with the shower room open and see your outfit full length. There’s also a bathroom cabinet with mirrored doors you push to open – it’s every bit as good as a domestic one.

Sleeping
This caravan is called a four berth but it’s really a three. In this model the lounge table is fixed so there’s no option to create a second double bed. One sofa is 2m long but the other is only 1.3m and you’d have to be a very small child to curl up on it. We think this is unashamedly a caravan for couples and we’ve scored it accordingly because the fixed-double bed is large and comfortable – it’s a full king-size and almost square, whereas some caravan beds are compromised by having cut-off or rounded corners. Tall people should find their feet fit onto the fully-sprung mattress, and conventional duvets will fit well, without any trailing corners. The headboard is too shallow to be useful and we think pillows will migrate annoyingly onto the windowsill. However, we score it up for the huge size of the bed, and that view. Look upward and you’re staring through the front rake of the caravan and up to the sky. We can’t think of any other caravan which lets you sleep under the stars. Strangely, the reading lamps are tungsten when you might expect them to be LEDs. The sleeping area is stunning, thanks to full-length voiles over both side windows, and there’s a folded partition which pulls across from both sides to separate the bedroom from the lounge.

Storage
We down-scored this caravan over its under-bed and under-sofa storage because it’s less usable than some rivals. The under-bed box is obviously at the front of the caravan so you can’t access the space from the front. It’s also smaller than the bed itself, because the base is undercut. However you can lift the base easily and it holds in place on gas struts. The two sofas have no front access to their storage, though you can lift the plywood sofa bases to gain access to that space. However, in other areas the caravan’s storage is superb. The kitchen cupboards are stunning, and the exterior gas locker is exceptional.

Lounging
The lounge is in the centre of the caravan, with U-shaped seating and a sofa opposite. it has a very communal, sociable feel, helped by the general spaciouslness the extra caravan width gives you. There are windows in every direction, including up – a panoramic rooflight lets plenty of light in direclty above the lounge. There are two long speakers, above each end of the U-shaped sofa and these appear to be superior to the usual run of circular caravan speakers.

Dining
Lovely position by the kitchen. The table unbolts allowing you to slide it to the front or the side, though, as we’ve said, it’s bolted to the floor as a permanent fixture. The Truma blown air heater is opposite the dining room. We’re a little surprised to find blown air rather than Alde heating at this price level, but that’s forgetting the vagaries of the exchange rate. It’s easy to look at the price and expect a caravan with the specification of a top of the range Swift, say, and the lack of Alde equipment puts this Dethleffs down a rung. The heater is housed in a large unit with a drawer, which makes a useful surface for a television (there’s an angled bracket here) or for serving food. There’s only one power socket here and it was clearly positioned when two-pin continental appliances were the plan – it’s a little too low to the work surface for UK appliances that have reinforced wiring protruding from the plug. Lift the top and pull out the drawer of this unit and you have access to the caravan’s fuse box.

Kitchen
End kitchens are great. You can stand out of the way of other people while you cook, and the storage cupboards along the back of the caravan can be very deep indeed. Their main drawback is the impact of having so much weight at the back when it comes to towing characteristics. It looks to us as if Detheffs has counterbalanced this nicely against the weight of the bed at the front, and we were not expecting a problem when it came to our test tow. The combined oven and grill is small, but then how many of us genuinely use the whole oven space in a caravan? We feel much more inclined to bemoan the fact that this Dethleffs has no microwave. The fridge, too, is very small. Cupboard space though, is spectacular. There’s a huge, deep cupboard next to the oven, and a truly stunning wide drawer at the bottom, with a divider to separate saucepans. We love this – and, let’s face it, if this were a British caravan you might only get a flap. The caravan’s safety isolating switches are under the kitchen worktop alongside the knobs for the three gas burners. This really works – everything’s easy to reach and the hob switches are never going to get hot. We rarely mention fuse boxes in reviews because there’s usually nothing much to say – most are under seats in the front lounge, and are easy to get at if your power cuts out in the middle of the night. The positioning in the Dethleffs may be unconventional, but it’s also pretty easy to access; unless you’ve piled the unit high with electrical gear. Surfaces in the kitchen are superb. You’ll be working next to a large window, with more than 60cm of worktop, clear to one side of the sink. A very clever three-part glass cover gives added work space when you’re not using the sink or some of the burners – just lift up the section you need to, and leave the other appliances covered. Over the hob there’s an air circulator, and a bank of shelves, offering ample storage. There are no plate racks here and we feel you’ll want to buy some to keep things under control in transit.

Build
The Germans are quite good at this! Take a look inside the gas locker and you’ll instantly see what we mean. The locker door has a cantilevered mechanism rather than hinges and lifts up rather than out. Inside you have a solidly built, full width compartment with space for two bottles, an easy-to-access mount for the spare wheel, and a purpose-built hanger for your waste water container. Even the handle and lock feel solid. There are other nice touches around the caravan, including a channel for a wheel cover when you’re pitched up and want to banish draughts from the wheel cavity. Corner steadies are the substantial Continental type, and the caravan is well constructed, with one-piece aluminium sides. Equipment levels are generally good; there’s an exterior barbecue point, and an onboard water tank. Our test caravan had a traditional two-socket connection to the car, but it’s a peculiarity of the current Lowdhams display models, and caravans ordered all come with the more modern standard 13-pin.

Towing
This is quite a long single-axle, leading us to expect a high nose-weight. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The Nomad 545 weighs in at 44kg without gas bottles, so we’d expect an actual noseweight in the region of 60kg. We suspect this has been achieved by the (in this case) sensible measure of having the heavy kitchen appliances right at the back. The AL-KO chassis has a long A-frame to aid towing stability, and there is an AL-KO hitchhead stabiliser included. ATC stability control isn’t included and we strongly advise it on a single-axle caravan this long.

Lacks Alde and ATC but for this tester it was love at first sight