Four floors, four characters
Thirty-one rooms behind larch shutters, each one measured, described honestly and matched to a way of travelling rather than a price bracket.
The four types
Sizes are measured to the inside of the plaster, not the corridor wall. Every figure below is a real dimension from the building survey rather than a rounded marketing number.
North-east aspect, 24–27 m², second and third floors. Two dormer windows framing the pass and the 2,102 m summit. Deep window seat with a hinged lid for luggage. Wide single bed or a pair; walk-in shower in slate.
Suits: walkers and early risers who want the mountain in the window and no screen in the room.
South-west aspect, 26–31 m², first to third floors. Orchard terrace below, longer evening light, and a folding larch door concealing a screen. Cast-iron bath with a shower over it. Two of the fourteen connect through a lockable door for families.
Suits: longer stays, families in the school holidays, and anyone who reads late.
Corner residences of 38–44 m² on the first and second floors, each with a separate reading alcove behind a glazed inner door — a genuine second room, not a widened corridor. Writing desk with a brass lamp and a wired connection, a wardrobe deep enough for a fortnight, and a bathroom with both a bath and a separate shower. Two face the pass, two face the orchard.
Suits: guests working from the lodge, and couples who keep different hours — one can read at midnight without waking the other.
Under the original roof beams, 46 and 52 m², reached by a private stair from the third floor. Sitting area, kitchenette with a kettle and a small refrigerator, and skylights that open. No lift service to this level and the stair is steep.
Suits: two-week stays and the quietest sleep in the building.
House details
Breakfast is served at the table from seven; if you are leaving before that, the night porter fills a flask and packs rye bread, cheese and fruit the evening before. Boots left outside your door at midnight are dry by six. The reading room on the ground floor keeps the valley newspapers, a decent atlas collection and a fire that the porter lights when the terrace thermometer drops below four degrees.
The lodge is not a place that asks you to do anything. Some guests walk eight hours a day and are asleep by nine. Others bathe at eleven, read all afternoon and drift down to the quarter after dinner. Both patterns work here because the four houses — residences, table, thermal halls and the annexe — run on separate hours and separate doors.
The gaming salon is in a detached annexe across the courtyard and has no internal connection to the residence floors. Entry is restricted to adults of legal gaming age with photographic identification, checked every time. Nothing about a stay here requires you to visit it, and no gaming of any kind takes place in the main building.