Bed And Breakfast Dartmouth

South Devon's modernist B&B

With its grand entrance, a gravel drive that sweeps up through trees to 12 acres of woodland, I half expected an English country-house cliche. But Kaywana Hall – a geometry of glass and steel, an American-style carport, a hint of Thunderbirds' Tracy Island – is as English as its foreign-sounding name (taken, incidentally, from the title of a 1950s novel, set in British Guiana, by South American author Edgar Mittelholzer). Lounging on my room's decked terrace, looking at a glamorous blue pool under a cloudless sky, I imagine I'm in California. A chilly wind rustling the oaks (and the distant hoot of a Dartmouth Railway steam engine chuffing through the valley below) brings me back to reality.

Kaywana Hall is a contemporary remake of a modernist house built in 1962 by south Devon architect Mervyn Seal. One of a series of "butterfly" houses, all in the Torbay area, it was inspired by Le Corbusier, and featured cantilevered cubes of glass under a dramatic inverted roof, each wing-like pitch tilting upwards to form an asymmetric V. When it was first built, passing coaches used to stop in the road below to allow touring passengers a quick gawp at this curious creature lurking in the woods.

For current owners Tony Pithers and Gordon Craig it was love at first sight. They planned to restore the house but demolition proved a more practical option. So all that remains of Mervyn Seal's Kaywana Hall are the foundations, the original chimney breast and a retro fishbone staircase. What I'm looking at now is the 21st-century creation of younger Devon architect Stan Bolt. And for us paying guests, it offers a rare thing – a purpose-built B&B. The three self-contained guest rooms were planned into the build.

Via steps that wind up to raised avenues of decking, pebbles and slate, two of Kaywana's spanking new rooms, Oak and Ash, are set into the hillside above the main house and have sun decks with views over woodland. I'm in Beech – furnished with floor-to-ceiling glass, slabs of colour (a deep aquamarine chosen to match an abstract painting from Guatemala), a big comfy bed, soft downy pillows, armchairs. The view of the pool is slightly marred by a blue plastic cover – which helps keeps the unheated water at a bearable temperature – but everything else is perfect. Rooms are equipped with robes and slippers, citronella patio candles, sun shades, fresh milk in silent fridges, jars of buttery homemade cookies, stylish Nick Munro beverage sets (chromed kettle, cups, cafetière) in cupboards stocked with wine glasses, ground coffee and Mighty Leaf teas. Our bathroom has bath and shower – the latter a curved walk-in tiled with white mosaics. And breakfast is a work of art (home-made granola, fresh fruit, mushrooms on toast, local sausages, pastries, proper bread) served in Tony and Gordon's immaculate open-plan living room where we admire the Mondrian-like architecture, the undercarriage of that winged roof. I could easily hang out here all day, but the location is great, too.

More from the Thule Team: A Week on the Ice « Dartmouth IGERT ...

[July 14, 2011]

Day 1 (Thursday July 7): The weather on Thursday cooperated, and our ~3000 pounds of gear and the four of us made it to 76N, 63W in two helicopter flights. Our home for the next week was a site 80 nautical mi from Thule where ICEBridge and the Greenland Inland Traverse (GrIT) intersected. The site was a flat expanse of white as far as they eye could see: the same view in every direction, no topography, and no landmarks. It was humbling, unsettling, and beautiful.

Allen (the mechanic), Ali, Stefan (the pilot), and Lee before heading off to our field site in the red helicopter!

When Lee and I arrived in the second chopper flight, Eric and Erich had moved the gear from their drop-off location (500 ft overshoot) to the desired camp spot and started building a wall for our sleeping area. Because of the winds, we had to build walls out of snow blocks to protect our sleeping tents, our cooking tent and kitchen area, and our latrine. We all set up the sleeping tents, and then Eric and Lee worked on a kitchen area while Erich and I dug a latrine with the ice core. Setting up camp took most of the afternoon and evening, and over dinner we discussed the plan to dig one snow pit and do the first GPR transect the following day.

Day 2 (Friday July 8): Erich and Lee dug an impressive 2 m pit in which they took measurements of snow temperature, density, conductivity (with a Finnish snowfork), bottled snow samples for chemical analysis back in Hanover, and packed cubic feet of snow into cubitainers for Fukushima Cesium detection.

Lee taking snow pit chemistry samples in her clean suit.

Eric worked on setting up the base station GPS and assembling the high-frequency GPR rover “Grover,” while I spent much of the morning entering waypoints into the arcane program on the handheld GPS by hand. Readying the GPR took much longer than expected, and Eric and I did not head out until after dinner (good thing the sun never set). We completed a 1 km traverse along an ICEBridge route, first with a straight route and then backtracking in zig zags to expand our data area. I navigated while Eric hauled both GPRs: Grover and the lower-frequency Ernie.

Ali and Eric doing GPR.

Days 3-4 (Saturday July 9 – Sunday July 10): The plan for Saturday was another 2 m pit adjacent to the previous day’s and a 30 m firn core drilled from the bottom of the first pit. When we woke up, it was overcast and difficult to distinguish ground from sky, but we got started with the pits and coring anyway. After a few hours, though, it became clear that the weather conditions were not going to be conducive to accomplishing much. Eric’s and my pit was filling in as we dug (so much so that in the course of taking 8 Finnish snowfork measurements, the pit filled in 10 cm). We were all getting soaked, and it was far too windy to operate the ice core.

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