As the owner of a luxury cruise agency, I’ve had my fair share of “pinch me” moments. But last October, I had one of my best yet. Playing tennis with Sir Richard Branson on his famous Necker Island. So how did I come to be there?
Panache Cruises, which we founded in 2020, has been lucky enough to be members of the FEBE Growth 100 for the last two years. This is a list, which Virgin now sponsors, of the fastest-growing, founder-led, privately-owned businesses in the UK.
Along with other members, I was invited to visit Virgin HQ on Charlotte Street in London where I met Holly Branson, Virgin’s chief vision officer, and also Noah Devereux, group director of special projects.
Noah co-founded Strive Collective with Sam Branson, which is all about getting like-minded people together and doing challenges. When Noah outlined an opportunity to travel to Necker Island with Strive, I jumped at the chance.
The idea of visiting Necker really appealed, it’s long been on my bucket list, and the potential to meet Sir Richard Branson, who is one of my all-time heroes, made it even more enticing.
I grew up when he was doing all of his challenges, like crossing oceans in hot air balloons and breaking the transatlantic speed record by boat. It’s all etched in my mind, and without Branson, I genuinely do not think I would be an entrepreneur.
We paid for the privilege of going to Necker, and a portion of the fee went towards the Big Change charity.
Active challenges
You might think checking into Necker will be all about rest and relaxation. A proper holiday. But my welcome gift left on my bed was Strive-branded kit… rash vests, running vests and the like. This is when I realised it was about to get serious.
Strive Collective is all challenging yourself and striving to be better, and each morning, we undertook a different challenge.
The first was scrambling up a mountain on Virgin Gorda, which was took us about three hours to do. The route was supposed to be a dry river bed, but it had been raining exceptionally hard for the last couple of days, so it was very wet, like walking up a waterfall. But it was great fun.
This really got us into the spirit of things and we started bonding as a group – there were 30 of us from all walks of life.
The next day, we were back to the same peak with a steep 1,400-metre incline so that was a tough.
The next day we ran 5K run in 30-degree heat, which, again, was reasonably tough.
Then the crowning event was a 5k open water swim. The water was so deep you couldn’t see the bottom for long parts of the swim, we had to dodge jelly fish, and a couple of swimmers even saw a shark as they made their way to the neighbouring island. This was the one I was really concerned about and it made me quite anxious, I’ll be honest. I can swim, but I'm not a swimmer. Eight weeks before the trip, I could barely swim 50 metres, but I made a plan and had 15 lessons in a pool and I managed to swim up to one kilometre non-stop before setting off for Necker.
On the day of the challenge, I was still apprehensive, but also mentally prepared. When I got in the water, I told myself, let's just go for a long snorkel. Let’s just keep going.
There were support vessels, in case anybody needed to be fished out of the ocean, but as soon as I got into the water, I was confident. I knew I was going to do it, and it took me a little while, but I got there in the end and completed the swim.
Meaningful conversations
That was the challenge side of things. In the afternoons, there were discussions and workshops about what was challenging us in life and in business, and how we could all strive to be better people.
Throughout the week, Sir Richard was often at the centre of things. We arrived by speedboat from Tortola and he personally welcomed us to the island, and he did a bomb into the sea as we were leaving. Classic Richard.
We were fortunate that he was there all week and we got to know him really well. He did most of the challenges with us, and he also gave us a couple of presentations about his life in business, and his adventures too.
To hear the man himself tell us his personal stories, and show us his pictures, was riveting – it was the chance of a lifetime and something I'll keep with me forever.
People say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, because you end up disappointed. But Richard blew me away with how personable and approachable he was, and it was fantastic to meet him, and spend time with the Strive Collective. Noah as well was very impressive, he made me feel exceptionally welcome and was supportive throughout.
Bonding over cruising
Richard and I had a couple of good chats about cruising, because obviously, one of his newer businesses is Virgin Voyages, and so he was particularly keen to talk to me about that. He's very enthusiastic about Virgin Voyages and disrupting the cruise market. They were exciting conversations, and we even recorded a video together for internal use at Panache Cruises all about Virgin Voyages, which was an added bonus.
We also had lunch with Richard’s wife, Joan a couple of times during that week, and it was very sad to hear about her passing the following month.
The whole island covers about 70 acres of land, and there's around 100 staff looking after everything. The food was fantastic and the bar always open.
The standard of accommodation is very high end, very luxurious. There is no pretentiousness to it. It is all – as you would imagine from Virgin – just very, very relaxed, but done to an exceptional standard, it was amazing.
We got a couple of hours each day to relax, and that was when we played tennis, padel and chess or we chatted in the pool or at the bar. I had a few quiet moments to myself when I just sat there, soaked it all up and reflected on what was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was very humbled by it all. It was an incredible week and I made some friends for life.
There is so much wildlife on Necker Island to enjoy too, over 100 species. The island provides a sanctuary for many endangered species. My favourites were the 700+ flamingos, giant tortoises, cheeky lemurs and huge iguanas.
Striving to be the best
I played doubles with Richard and I played against him. For somebody well into their 70s, he’s very fit and very dedicated to looking after himself. I was really inspired by him – I think I look after myself reasonably well, I go to the gym three times a week, I don’t drink, I eat reasonably healthy food. But with Richard, I saw there’s a whole other level of looking after yourself.
He’s made sure he’s doing all the right thing so he can look after the people around him, look after his business and get a better balance in life. He’s up playing tennis at sunrise – he was always up for a game – and I don’t think he touched much alcohol all week.
Since my return, we've been having conversations with Virgin Limited Edition, looking at how we can match their amazing properties around the world with cruise itineraries.
When you consider the quality, the laidback ethos, and the luxuriousness of Virgin Limited Edition, there is a definite match with our luxury cruise customers.
There are so many things that my week on Neckar taught me, but that 5k swim was the biggest lesson of all. It taught me that, with dedication and commitment, you can achieve things far beyond what you think you can. With the right mindset, you can go from impossible to inevitable. And one day, one of your heroes might even be cheering you on from the shoreline.
As told to Katherine Masters.
