Is The Brecon really all inclusive?

Yes, and the phrase does it a disservice. Dinner is included and served at the table, breakfast runs long, there is an afternoon snack, and the drinks are included in a way I have not seen done like this: champagne, rum and good whisky, out in the open, poured by you when you want them. Nobody counts and nobody presents you with a list at the end. It is the arrangement of a house where the host has told you to help yourself.

Is The Brecon adults only, and how big is it?

Adults only, eighteen rooms and a handful of suites, one of which is usually kept for Grant Maunder himself. That is the scale of a large mountain house with friends in it, and it is the reason the common rooms never feel crowded and the small outdoor pool was free every time I went down to it.

Is Adelboden like Gstaad or St Moritz?

No, and anyone hoping for that will be disappointed within an hour. There are no boutiques to walk past and no scene to be part of. People come here to ski, to walk in the woods, and in summer to swim in the village pool, and then to spend the evening indoors by a fire. I think that is the best thing about the place.

Do I have to ski to stay here?

No. I would come for the house alone. There is the spa, the small heated pool outside with the mountains in front of it, the fire, and walking in every direction. The ski room and the piste advice are there when you want them, and the rest of the stay stands up without them.

How does dinner work?

The kitchen is open to the room, the menu is built on what is fresh and in season, and it is served to you at the table in the evening when everyone comes together. There is no reservation to make and no separate bill. Cocktails before and after are part of the same idea, taken when you feel like them.

The Brecon

The Brecon exists because two brothers from Wales were brought to Adelboden to ski as children and never got over it. Grant and Craig Maunder opened The Cambrian first and this one more recently, and the Welsh names on two Swiss hotels are the whole story: places from home, carried up a valley in the Bernese Oberland by people who have been coming since they were small.

Adelboden is the other half of it. There is no shopping here of the kind Gstaad and St Moritz are known for, and nobody arrives wanting to be looked at. People come to ski, and in the warm months to swim in the village's olympic pool and walk in the woods above it, and the evening finishes indoors with a fire going. Anyone who wants a boutique on the way to dinner is in the wrong valley, and I would say that is the whole appeal of this one.

Snow on the peaks above Adelboden with pine forest and a green meadow below — The view the village is arranged around, and the reason nobody here is looking at shop windows.

The long timber facade of The Brecon from the road at dusk with the mountains behind — From the road it reads as a large house that happens to take guests.

A copper lamp mounted on a stone wall beside a window, with a small plaque below it — A copper lamp on the old stonework. Almost nothing here was thrown away.

The building was a hotel before this, and it has been taken apart and put back together by Nicemakers, the Dutch studio. What they have done is unusual in a way worth saying plainly: the place is small, eighteen rooms and a few suites, and most of the effort has gone into the rooms you do not sleep in.

A dark timber corridor at The Brecon lit low along the floor with a red striped runner — The corridors are kept dark on purpose, so the rooms at either end do the work.

A lounge at The Brecon with armchairs on a green checked rug, paper lanterns overhead and windows onto the mountains — The green check runs through the house, and after three days you stop seeing it as a pattern.

A lounge with leather banquettes, paper lanterns and a framed vintage Adelboden travel poster — An old Adelboden poster, hung where everyone passes it. The village has been doing this a long time.

The house

What stays with me is the calm. It is a sophisticated calm, and it runs through every room, and the effect of it is that you can find a corner to yourself outside your own bedroom. That is rare. In most hotels the choice is your room or a lobby with other people's conversations in it. Here there are enough rooms downstairs, and they are arranged well enough, that an hour alone with a book in front of a fire is always available to somebody.

A sofa with lit candles on a low table, art on the wall and a checked rug — Candles lit in the afternoon, by somebody who went round and did it.

A sitting room at The Brecon with a checked armchair, green sofas on a green checked rug and a large abstract canvas, windows onto the mountains — The one room where the colour is allowed to argue with itself, and it works.

A corner panelled in olive green with a scalloped rattan mirror — Olive panelling and a scalloped mirror. The Dutch studio enjoyed the corners.

It is adults only, and the number of guests is held down by the size of the place, so the whole thing runs at the pitch of a large mountain house with friends in it. If Grant Maunder's idea was that people should feel they are staying in a house with every comfort in it, he has managed it. With a little luck you will see him crossing the common rooms straightening the ornaments or moving the bottles back into line, the way anyone does at home, saying hello to people properly on the way past.

The room

There is no television in any room, and somebody decided that on purpose. What you get is the window, a radio that spends most of its time on a classical station, and silence enough to read in or to talk in. I went up expecting to mind it and came down three days later thinking it should be done more often.

A bedroom at The Brecon in late afternoon light, the glass doors running the width of the wall onto a balcony with red chairs and the snow covered peaks behind — The glass runs the width of the room, and at four in the afternoon the light comes in along the rug.

The view from the balcony at The Brecon over the village roofs to the snow on the peaks, with the carved timber balustrade in front — From the balcony, over the carved rail. This is the argument for the whole room.

A bed with a black headboard and a patterned alpine blanket, on a striped runner rug — The blankets are the one loud thing in a quiet room.

I saw more than one room on this stay. The shapes change with the floor and the pitch of the roof, and the materials stay the same throughout: timber, wool, stone, and colour used carefully in the rugs and the ceramics.

The mountain framed in the bedroom window seen from the bed past the duvet — This is what replaces the television, and it holds up better.

A bed under a white painted sloped ceiling with exposed beams and a grey knitted throw — Under the roof the beams are left showing, and the ceiling does the decorating.

A bed between two windows with brown curtains, a black armchair and a pink striped rug — Two windows and an armchair positioned at the better one.

The bathrooms are the part I would photograph again. Terracotta tile taken all the way up, a basin cut from a single piece of stone, black taps, and nothing on the shelf that does not earn its place.

A bathroom at The Brecon with terracotta tiling, a stone basin on a timber vanity and a walk-in shower — Terracotta to the ceiling, which warms the room before the heating does.

A carved stone basin with black taps, Aesop bottles and a round mirror above — A basin cut from one block of stone, which is an expensive way to be quiet.

A retro blue radio on marble beside a handwritten card with a letter B printed at the top — The radio and a card written by hand. Both of them tell you what kind of house this is.

A round sheepskin cushion resting on copies of Monocle and The Aficionados on a dark round table — Somebody left the right magazines out, and then put a sheepskin on top of them.

A close detail of the patterned alpine blanket with a pink bound edge — The pink binding on the blanket. A small decision, repeated everywhere.

A coupe glass standing on the balcony rail with the snow covered mountains beyond — A glass on the balcony rail at six. Nobody brought it up and nobody will take it away.

What is included, and what that word usually means

The word included does this place a disservice, because it arrives carrying a package holiday behind it. The arrangement here is the one you get in the house of a friend who has told you to help yourself and then genuinely meant it. The champagne is out. So is the rum, and whisky that has no business being left unattended. You pour what you want when you want it and nobody is writing anything down. Dinner is included too, cooked in front of you and brought to the table.

It took me an evening to stop asking permission, which I suspect is normal, and the moment I stopped was the moment I understood what the brothers had built.

The valley at Adelboden filling with low cloud, seen over the edge of the heated outdoor pool — Late morning, with the cloud coming up the valley and the pool still empty.

The water, and the fire

The spa is small and the outdoor pool is small, and both of them were free every time I walked down. That is the arithmetic of eighteen rooms, and it is worth more here than a larger pool with a queue at it. The water is heated, so November is no obstacle, and sitting in it with the snow on the peaks in front of you is the photograph at the top of this page and the clearest argument the place makes.

The heated outdoor pool steaming beneath the timber facade of the hotel — Steam coming off the water under the balconies, on a morning around freezing.

Loungers with pink cushions in a timber lined relaxation room with colour panels — The relaxation room, which I had entirely to myself on all three afternoons.

A timber lined spa room with a long low window framing the mountains and a stone floor — The window is set low so you can see out of it lying down.

Afterwards there is the fire, and somebody will already have lit it.

Eating

The kitchen is open to the room, which changes the evening. You are not waiting for food to arrive from somewhere else in the building; you can see it being made, and the cooking sets the rhythm of the night. The menu is built on what is fresh and in season that week.

The open kitchen at The Brecon with a marble counter, pendant lights and a round table with bentwood chairs — The kitchen is in the room with you, which is the single best decision in the house.

A stone flagged hall at The Brecon with a dark tiled arch opening onto the long dining table beyond — You come through the arch and the long table is already laid. That is the whole evening announced.

A round table with a scalloped timber edge laid with glasses — The scalloped edge on the tables. Somebody had the drawings done properly.

During my stay the chef was Italian, from Vercelli, which is the middle of Italian rice country, and the porcini risotto he put in front of us was better than most of what I have paid for in restaurants that make a feature of it. I am aware that the chef who is there when you go may be someone else entirely. The point is the standard the house is holding, and on the evidence of three dinners it is holding it high.

A tall glass fronted cabinet of wine bottles lit from within — The wine is behind glass, and the spirits are not. That tells you the house rules.

A plate of beef carpaccio with shaved fennel and a glass of red wine beside it — Carpaccio with fennel shaved over it, eaten about four metres from where it was cut.

A wide ceramic bowl of ribbon pasta under a meat ragu, with a wine glass behind it — The Italian hand in the kitchen shows up on the pasta before it shows up anywhere else.

Breakfast runs long, which matters in a place where the evenings go on, and there is a snack in the afternoon for anyone who came back off the hill hungry.

A plate of braised greens and meat on a ceramic dish with a fork — Seasonal is a word that gets used loosely. In November here it means what was available.

Croissants and pains au chocolat with small jars of jam on a timber rack over marble — Breakfast is laid on marble and left there for a long time.

Eggs benedict with smoked salmon and hollandaise on a plate — Eggs done properly to order, at an hour of your choosing.

Skiing, and the other months

There is a ski room, and the people here will sit down with you and work out which pistes are worth the morning. Adelboden is a World Cup stop, so this is a serious mountain with serious terrain on it, and local advice beats a piste map by a distance. Ask on the first evening.

I was there at the end of November, early enough that the season had not started and the lifts were still quiet. The first snow came down while I was in the room, and it kept coming for most of an afternoon. By evening there was a hand's depth of it on the chair out on the balcony and the valley had changed colour. Anyone who has waited for a season to begin somewhere will know what that afternoon felt like.

Snow falling past a timber balcony at The Brecon, settling on a red chair and on a balustrade cut with fir tree shapes — The first snow of the season, falling on the balcony chair through the whole afternoon.

The letter B of The Brecon's monogram on a dark surface, with the snow covered mountain behind it — The house mark, and behind it the reason everybody comes.

A balcony at The Brecon with red metal chairs and a bench on stone flags, the valley and the first snow on the peaks beyond — Late November on the balcony. Green below, white above, and a fortnight before the lifts open.

In the warm months the village has its olympic pool and the woods run in every direction above the house. Most people file Adelboden under winter and never find out about the rest of the year.

Advisor's perspective

This is a different model of a mountain holiday, and it suits a particular traveller very well. Two people who want a house, a fire, serious food, a mountain outside and nobody to perform for will be happy here for a week. So will anyone who skis and wants to come back to something quiet. It is adults only, so it rules itself out for families, and anyone who wants shops, a scene, and somewhere to be seen at dinner should book Gstaad and will be happier for it.

What the Maunder brothers have made is a mix of the old building, a careful piece of design, real comfort, and a way of running a house that treats guests as guests. I have stayed in larger places in better known valleys that manage none of it.

Three nights was right. Four would have been better.