Boutique Narrowboats
After careers including running travel hostels and working in children’s nurseries, Aaran and Sharon Peach of Boutique Narrowboats decided to change pace and embrace a slower way of life.
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How did the idea for Boutique Narrowboats come about?
Aaran and I took a weekend break on a narrowboat from Market Harborough in 2016, and we completely fell in love with the experience. We’d never done anything quite like it and realised that most of our friends hadn’t either. Narrowboating had seemed like such a quaint, old-fashioned idea, but we returned from our weekend absolutely buzzing. Before long, we had bought a second-hand boat and set about renovating it. How long did it take you to renovate your first boat? The first one, Lesley Ann, took about 18 months. Chalkhill Blue followed, and that was a 12-month endeavour. After that, we began to buy new ‘shells’ and fit them out from scratch. A boat now takes us around 6-8 months to do a complete renovation, depending on the requirements. We fit out Boutique Narrowboats for private clients, as well as for hire, so we can receive a lot of varied specifications. Where do you get your inspiration? Generally, we want our boat interiors to feel contemporary, with a rustic twist. The neutral colour palettes provide a soothing backdrop for all the greenery in nature, and we love to use lots of natural materials throughout. We source reclaimed wood for our bespoke interior doors, for example. Each boat is unique. The decorative finishes on our current hire boat in build, Paper Kite, are inspired by the Victorian era. What do you hope your customers will experience from hiring one of the boutique narrowboat? More than anything, we want our guests to feel they’ve experienced something new. If they are seasoned boaters, we hope they will find something special about our interior spaces. If they are narrowboat novices, our aim is that we will have introduced them to a whole new world. On a narrowboat, you tend to see life in a different way. Literally of course, because you are travelling by water through the landscape, but also, metaphorically. It’s a very slow-paced adventure which encourages you to learn new skills and work closely with your partner, meeting new people on the way. It’s a gentle bonding adventure. How long can people hire the narrowboats for? We specialise in short breaks, so three, four or seven nights. You can also hire a small narrowboat for the day, and we offer skippered boat trips for parties for those who would prefer to leave the driving to someone else! What do you love most about renovating and hiring out boats? We love talking to guests when they return and finding out about their adventures. We never get tired of that. It’s a brilliant part of the country to take your first narrowboat trip because, not only is it stunningly beautiful, but there are lots of boating highlights to try. Foxton Locks is famous throughout the canal world and the lock keepers are brilliant at supporting novices. There are also tunnels and swing bridges, as well as fabulous waterside pubs along the way. |
Issue 21
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