John Liley has devoted much of his adult life to boating and the inland waterways. As a teenager, he became involved in early IWA campaigns and he even met its founding members, Robert Aickman and Tom Rolt. In conversation with WW editor Bobby Cowling, he describes the fledging years of the leisure-boating era, and his journey to owning a luxury hotel-barge on France’s Canal du Nivernais.