Freedom Jetsteam First Class

Freedoms are narrower, shorter and lighter than all other caravans on the British market. They’re made in Poland and, new for 2012, a spare wheel is standard

You’d expect a caravan weighing only 750kg to be basic, and most Freedoms are. But that’s basic by comparison with British-made caravans, which is perhaps a little unfair, because Polish-made Freedoms are in a class of their own.

A Freedom might be for you if you like camping but you want to keep dry; or you have a very lightweight car; or you want a caravan so light that one person can push it. Yet the Jetstream First Class is less basic than you’d imagine. This model has a shower – which sets it apart from the other two Freedoms in the range, the Microlite and Sunseeker.

The Jetstream First Class has a classic layout, with a rear kitchen and a shower compartment in the offside back corner. The fridge is just forward of the door, with the wardrobe directly opposite. A double bed makes up in the lounge.

Showering

How can there be a credible shower in a caravan so small? This question dominated our conversation as we towed the caravan from the importer in Stafford to our campsite for the test, at Cannock Chase.
The shower really is an amazing little room. There’s a bench-style loo, with electric flush.

There’s a small tip-up basin above it and above that, a large oval mirror that you can adjust in height. The shower rose is neatly mounted in the corner of the wood-effect cladding that lines all the walls of the compartment. Unlike most UK caravans, which have full plastic linings encasing the shower, this one has a curtain track all the way round the shower tray to stop water from reaching the wooden walls.

This really is a clever little room, with no-frills, but a lot of functionality crammed into a tiny space. And there’s a surprise; a wooden flap lifts up to the rear of the toilet to reveal enough space to store two small water containers (they come with the package).

Sleeping

A double bed makes up in the lounge, which is U-shaped - simple! The upholstery has no knee rolls, which means it creates a flat bed.

Storage

Upper storage cabinets run around all three sides of the lounge; the ones across the front are small, but sizeable enough to be useful. The wardrobe is a conventional size, with good hanging depth.

Dining

There’s a conventional free-standing table but nowhere to put it when it’s not in use. We wondered why there were no clips in the wardrobe to secure the table. This would have been the obvious place to store it, as there is no dedicated table store cupboard or slot of the sort we see in British-built caravans.

Lounging

First looks at the short lounge would have you believe it might be seriously lacking in comfort. The upholstery is block-shaped, with no knee rolls. And it’s foam, as distinct from sprung. It doesn’t look as if it would be anything like as comfortable as the sprung seating in a British caravan. But looks can deceive you. We found that the foam is surprisingly comfortable.

Kitchen

Cooking equipment exceeds our expectations; there are four burners, whereas most caravans from mainland Europe have only three. There’s also a grill – albeit a small one – under the hob. No oven, though.
There’s a surprise hiding in the lower kitchen cupboard; the water heater is in here, rather than under a settee, as British convention would lead us to expect. Yet its presence doesn’t present storage issues. That’s because, for such a diminutive caravan, the kitchen’s lower storage capability is astonishingly large.

Towing

Something else to bear in mind: the nose weight of Jetstream is incredibly light – until you put some load into it, of course. And with a gas bottle compartment as tall and wide as this one, you could, in theory, put in a couple of 13kg bottles, although few people will choose to do this. Once two 7kg butanes are on board, and a few things are under the lounge seating, the Jetstream will lose its tendency to bounce up at the front end as you unhitch – a characteristic that we found a little unnerving during our unladen test.

Freedom caravans are like no others. They’re tiny, featherweight – and the Jetstream First Class has more equipment than you might expect