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The Crew Owning and piloting a beautiful craft such as Nilaya is not a one person job. It takes two and throughout the summer months I am joined aboard by a variety of wonderful 'full time' crew.
There's never a shortage of lively banter. Topical conversation blended with jokes and liberal dashes of typically British humour! This is but one of the magical ingredients that make 'Nilaya' such an outstandingly 'happy' ship. It also creates memorable experiences for guests cruising aboard her. Your Host To say that I love travel would be an understatement. Having enjoyed a good career way back in the dark ages of Thatcherite Britain, I realised even then that there had to be far more to life than the nine to five.
Each time I ran out of money and flew home, I found the UK ever more depressing, increasingly dull, overtly threatening and mind bendingly expensive. All this at a time when my lack of job "commitment" resulted in a CV that had more holes than a piece of Emmental.
Luckily for me, I'd bought a house way back when they were cheap and calculated that if I sold it and everything that wasn't bolted down, I might be able to pay back the bank and with the residue buy a barge. By "barge" however, at that time I had a UK style Narrowboat "barge" in mind.
The above picture demonstrates the huge difference in size between a UK narrowboat and Dutch Barge such as Nilaya. What is doesn't show is that Nilaya is also over twice the narrowboat's width! Then purely by chance I accidentally stumbled upon the picture of a stunning "luxemotor Dutch barge". It was beautifully photographed in bright sunlight with blue skies behind it, happy healthy looking people populating the decks, each with a glass of wine in hand and gazing out across an undeniably French landscape. This was more like it. Bigger barges than I'd ever dreamed of. A vast European waterways network to be discovered and along with it, a Europe that I had sadly neglected in favour of more distant long haul destinations. I now had a plan and a new mission in life... To enjoy a barge cruise on the canals of France! The rest as they say is history.... My personal passions lie in world travel, waterways, cycling, cooking, entertaining, fine wines and socialising. If you combine this with my love of history, nature and the wealth of stunning scenery that abounds in Europe, then running informal barge cruises aboard my home, Nilaya became the only real and wonderful choice. ...and yes. "It really is heaven in the heart of France..." Come and see for yourselves as guests. PS - I used to have a website called peopletree which contained lots of photographs taken during my global travels. I've long since sold the peopletree domain but you are welcome to have a look at them by clicking here.
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These friends compliment
everyone's experience on Nilaya as borne out by the guest comments in 
So I set out to change
things and boy did things change. First, I chucked in the job, second,
bought a backpack and third bought a plane ticket to India. After
wandering around the world that first time for nearly two years, I found
that it became ever more difficult to stay put at home. 
Employment masked the real
reason I worked which was simply to replenish my bank balance in order
to head off again. The problem with this was that as the eighties gave
way to the nineties, gave way to the millennium, I had spent nearly all
of it wandering the globe. 
This "leaky"
resume provided ever more lack lustre employment
"opportunities" with the resultantly pathetic salaries that
generally went with them. Early in 2001, I was forced to take positive
action!
While searching on the
internet for suitable craft, up popped a plethora of English narrowboats,
but closer inspection persuaded me that they were, well, a bit too
narrow! Also, that the UK waterways were reaching breaking point in
terms of lack of maintenance and the weight of new boats being built.
Coupled with this was the frightening cost and distinct lack of pleasant
moorings. I also decided that maybe I needed something a little more
exotic than the Trent and Mersey! 
