Elddis Avanté Club 464

Is the new-for-2009 compact family caravan from Elddis, the Elddis Avanté Club 464, s a little too compact for the needs of an energetic family of four? We put it to a virtual test..

Question: how do you squeeze a layout to accommodate a family into a caravan the size of a two-berth? Elddis engineers devised the answer: they took the six-berth Avanté 556, removed the side dinette and squeezed it into the size of the two-berth 462.

This compressed layout manages to slot two bunks across the rear wall and a choice of twin singles or a large transverse double up front into a caravan with an overall length of just 5.48 metres. Perhaps more importantly, the Avanté Club 464 weighs just 1320kg fully laden, so it can be safely towed by a medium-sized car.

Assessing a family caravan is easy when you have the family with you. Their chatter and reactions to their temporary home are valuable input into a test report. But this time I was going to have to be a bit more creative...

My own little bundles of joy usually join me to help out with live-in tests, but this time they’re at school.
So, for the purposes of this test, I’ve brought my imaginary kids along with me. They’re exactly like the real thing, but much quieter and a lot less messy, although their hugs aren’t as warm and cuddly.

I would have dearly liked to bring my beautiful wife along too but, alas, she has to work to subsidise my writing habit, so I’ll have to imagine she’s alongside me to navigate to Beechwood Grange Caravan Club site on the outskirts of York in glorious spring sunshine.

I’ll have to think hard about how Ellie (six in 2009, sometimes going on 16) and Freddie (three but refusing to let go of the terrible twos) would react to this caravan; who would prefer to sleep where, how much they’d like it – or not. Here goes...
The Event Club 464 is a logical addition to the Avanté range. That’s because, since it was pushed upmarket to make room for the new entry-level Xplore, it has competed much more effectively with Swift’s Charisma range and Bailey’s Pageant Series 7.
Elddis’ slightly clunky and traditional approach to interior décor has given way to an altogether more contemporary feel. Long gone are the framed lockers and garish colour schemes. They’re replaced with curved aircraft-style lockers and cool creams, beiges and browns.

The kitchen has a three-burner hob, oven and grill of course, plus a 700-watt microwave above the hob. The hob and combined stainless steel sink and drainer have tough Chinchilla glass covers which make ideal work surfaces. But I found that raising them to use the sink or hob can inadvertently turn on the mixer tap, requiring rapid intervention to prevent a mini flood. The kids would have laughed at that...

The cooking equipment requires manual ignition and, because the hob is “left-handed” with the controls running down the right hand side, I found lighting it quite fiddly. Suppose they’d have laughed at that, too.

The flip-up extension to the worktop proved very handy as I prepared supper. And while I found the height of the microwave fine, those of very short stature may feel uncomfortable handling hot fluids at this height. But the 464 isn’t alone with this problem, of course.

The kitchen has two of the Avanté’s three 230-volt sockets. The third is located below the central chest of drawers in the lounge. But the absence of a mains socket towards the rear of the caravan, where children are most likely to watch DVDs or play video games, is something of an oversight. I know exactly what the kids would have said about that!
The Thetford fridge is the 113-litre size. Alongside it is a locker where the cutlery drawer and a couple of pull-out wire racks are fitted. There’s more storage in the overhead lockers, but these are quite shallow and will only just accommodate a standard breakfast cereal box. The kids would have views on that, too – cereal’s a favourite and therefore bought in large packets.

The front lounge looks a little on the short side, but would actually seat four easily and six quite comfortably. The kids would have enjoyed testing the new sprung upholstery, which is noticeably superior to last year’s Avanté cushions. They’d have also appreciated the ease with which the central table extension can be extracted for colouring, sticking and pasting. Or, to be more accurate, the ease (and therefore the speed) with which the adults can put in place the colouring studio when they realise that this is the quickest route to peace and quiet...

However, experience of my energetic little darlings, tinged with the imagination that this virtual-family situation demands, quickly tells me that if the children are busy in the lounge, there’s not much room left for the grown-ups to relax here. Trying to read the paper while a three-year-old is bouncing around just a couple of feet away is not my idea of relaxing.
What would the kids have made of the showering arrangements? There’s a folding sink above the bench-style loo. Perfect for inventing a game with yellow bath ducks, they’d say. Hmm. Not a perfect idea. There’s a folding partition to separate shower area from loo and there’s ample room for an adult to shower in comfort, but the entire washroom will need some serious mopping after the sort of particularly enthusiastic ablutions that take place when the little people get in there.
There’s a slender mirrored cabinet above the washbasin, but little in the way of any additional storage for the shampoo bottles, let alone the bath ducks.

The kids get their own environment at night in that excellent rear-bunk arrangement. But, good as this layout is, I can imagine conflict arising...

Explorer (in common with many manufacturers) post a notice on the top bunk advising you that it’s not suitable for children under six. (Clearly that’s sensible advice as they might make an unscheduled rapid descent to the caravan floor.) Now we all know kids love clambering up into top bunks. They grab with both hands and both feet the opportunity to look down on their parents. Telling our three-year-old Freddie  that he can’t sleep up there is not going to be easy... Ahh – for the first time in this virtual family holiday I feel a little relieved I don’t have to find the right words to say “no”.

I thought the fixed access ladder was rather tricky, but then after watching the virtual kids on the site’s climbing frame, I quickly realised they’ll shin up just about anything with relish.

The lower bunk has plenty of headroom for larger children. Both bunks have reading lights and the top berth also gets a neat little storage shelf to stow the most precious toys close at hand. There are two more narrow shelves above the table storage place, just inside the door, and further storage under the bottom bunk. Usefully, you can access this area via a mini external door on the offside. This space can be turned into a great storage area by lifting the base of the bottom bunk to a vertical position. But its location right at the back of the caravan dictates that only relatively light items are stowed here. Not ideal for a heavy awning.

Elsewhere in the storage stakes, the 464 acquits itself pretty well. The overhead lockers are quite shallow and there are no splitter shelves, but there’s plenty of space for bulky items under the settees up front – easily accessed through drop-down doors. To keep the all-up weight down, though, Elddis has restricted the 464’s user payload to less than 200kg, which isn’t a huge amount for a family of four to play with.

The sun is streaming through the front windows when I pitch up, but as it arcs over to the west the interior of the Avanté begins to feel ever so slightly gloomy – particularly at the back of the caravan where the washroom meets the rear bunks. This layout is inevitably short on windows, but the situation isn’t helped by only having a midi- Heki rooflight over the lounge and an even smaller rooflight just ahead of the bunks.

Once the sun sets, the Avanté’s lighting improves matters slightly, but while the rest of the 12-volt lights are fine, the fluorescent bulb in the main ceiling light is a little feeble.

Temperatures dropped quickly after sundown and I was soon reaching for the heating system’s mains switch. Great to warm the lounge but the back of the caravan is significantly cooler due to the absence of any blown air outlets.

On solo live-in tests, I usually make do with one of the singles because making up a bed when you’re ready to drop seems just too much like hard work. But this time I’d make up the double… Unlike many beds which rely on those fiddly pull-out slats held together by webbing, those in the Avanté worked smoothly every time. It was then simply a case of rearranging the cushions and – behold: a big, comfortable double bed all to myself.

After an indulgent night’s uninterrupted slumber (that was nice, no kids to get me up at 5am), I breakfasted outside and planned the day’s site-seeing in the centre of York; I make for the park and ride facility close to Beechwood Grange Caravan Club site.

With the Avanté on a delightful corner pitch at Beechwood Grange I watched foals at the adjacent stud farm frolicking in their paddock. The first swallows dipped and swooped low over the grass picking off the abundance of clumsy hawthorn flies which suddenly appeared in their droves, like a battalion of tiny black parachutists...

In such circumstances, it’s easy to be seduced by the simplicity of caravanning. It’s easy to picture the family eating outside in the early evening sun. Then the kids would have another charge around the adventure playground before hopping willingly into their bunks without a murmur of protest.

Yeah, right. We all know it seldom actually happens like that and, had the weather not been so benign and had the kids really were with me, I think life in the Avanté 464 would have been less idyllic.

The dining arrangements would be fine for the four of us – with plenty of room for family meals around the table.
The problems would set in when the rain pelted down just at the time you’ve explored all of the entertainment options in the vicinity, because the Avanté 464 is a little light on living space bearing in mind family activities need space.

Sure, the ideal family break involves action-packed days during which the kids exhaust themselves before collapsing into bed at 7o’clock on the dot. The reality is usually very different and I’d be slightly cautious about using the Avanté for a fortnight of family holiday unless the weather was pretty much guaranteed to be dry and warm. Southern Spain, then…

The obvious solution is to invest a few hundred pounds in an awning and the problem disappears at a stroke. Budget for an awning right away if the 464 is your choice; you’ll appreciate the extra space.

The Elddis Avanté Club 464 is a compact family bunk-bed option, with a weight of only 1320kg MTPLM. Whether it’s too compact for your family’s needs, especially when rain stops outside play, is open to question. But then that’s why 90% of caravan owners buy awnings!