Elddis Avanté 372

Ideal for couples who want the ultimate in short length caravans and who also require a separate shower

Exterior

There’s something rather appealing about an extremely small caravan. They look cute, in an almost quirky way – a way that invites amazement that two beds, a kitchen and a shower could be shoe-horned into just 3.7m of body length. One reason why it’s all possible is underneath the caravan – it’s the Whale underfloor-mounted heater system that ducts warm air through outlets in the lounge. Despite being quirky, there’s something slightly strange about the exterior, though, as the door window is darkly tinted, whereas all other windows are clear. It looks just a shade out of place. The deep, offside lounge window sets the 372 apart from the pack; five years ago there were plenty of caravans with L-shaped lounges and long windows but they’re now a rarity.

Interior

The 372’s layout is among the most ingenious around. The lounge is L-shaped. The kitchen, on the offside, is 1.82m long and impressive on storage as well as surface space. The shower room, though, is even more impressive for its TARDIS-like capacity. It’s in the offside corner, but don’t image anything traditional in terms of a shower sharing a room with a loo – you step straight into the shower tray from the kitchen.

A plastic door divides the shower from the rest of the little room, and that’s where the ingenuity is most impressive. A washbasin is disguised beneath a plastic wall cabinet that’s slightly S-shaped. The basin swings out over the toilet; it’s triangular, with a tap that folds flat to enable it to go under the cabinet. The shower room occupies just over half of the width of the caravan. The rest of the space goes to the wardrobe, and here again the Elddis design team have excelled. There are two hanging rails, one above the other, giving a total hanging width of 1.72m.

More storage

Two deep shelves are on the left side of the wardrobe and the table clips to the wall on the right. At floor level there is more space for footwear than you see in most caravans twice the length of the 372. A five-drawer unit between the entrance door and the nearside settee gives more space for clothing. It also gives you a drawer for cutlery, which is lacking in the kitchen area.

Making the double bed is a simple process of drawing the wooden base from underneath the settee that runs across the caravan. The sleeping area is 1.3m wide (that’s almost as wide as a standard domestic double bed), and 2.08m long. The beauty of this arrangement compared with classic parallel settee two-berth layouts is that, when the bed is made up, there is still an area of seating. That’s ideal when one person prefers to go to bed before the other.

Kitchen

The kitchen is a masterpiece of creativity in such a small caravan. You have a surface that’s 73cm long – space for adventurous cuisine. The hob has four burners; there’s a full oven and grill, plus a microwave set at a conveniently low height.

Under the microwave an enormous cupboard takes care of all possible kitchen storage that you could need. Two top cabinets (with delightful white doors) will accommodate tableware and much more besides, then two shelves to the right of these lockers are there for things like the pepper mill and other small items that you tend to use frequently.

Six more cabinets surround the lounge, in fact, storage capacity is utterly amazing for such a small caravan. Only the area for your duvet and pillows might just attract criticism. It’s under the nearside settee and the front hinge-down door isn’t quite a match for the size of a bulky duvet. It might be easier to raise the base of the seat and dive in from the top.

Under the settee, that spans the width of the caravan, a drawer adds to the amazing overall storage capability. Big, bright lights are a feature of the décor, streaming white light out from each corner and out across the roof from above the cabinets in the kitchen and lounge as well.

This little lightweight with amazing layout and great features is certainly good value