Hobby is the largest caravan manufacturer in the world, and it’s also pretty adept at motorhome manufacturing.

But you wouldn’t get that impression if you restricted your motorcaravanning to the UK.

Certainly not in the past decade, anyway, when issues with the company’s former UK distributor led to some dealers dropping the brand.

But such troubles should now be behind it and, with the latest (very keen) UK agent taking over last year, Hobby is now making headway with 13 motorhome dealers in the UK.

Meanwhile, back home in Germany, some of the firm’s recent innovations have been remarkable.

So we leapt at the chance to try out a model from Hobby’s Optima De Luxe range when one was offered – and took it for a spin across North Wales.

The model we were particularly keen to try – the T70F – has an offside French bed and a rear washroom.

UK dealers for another brand had told us that historically this layout has never sold that well in the UK.

So are we Brits missing a trick? Here is the Practical Motorhome verdict.