One of our readers contacted us to say that he had booked a cruise for Christmas and would be calling in at Lanzarote for the day, we went to meet up with Peter Hammond and partner Kim, both currently living in Gosport.
Peter and Kim were on the Fred Olsen cruise ship MS Balmoral and having spent the last twenty years taking holidays in Lanzarote. They decided not to go haring off around the island but to relax and stay in the Puerto Naos area. We caught up with them at dockside Café Mingo. Peter is a character, he reminds me of the Bolton steeplejack Fred Dibnah, wearing his flat cap and four layers of clothes despite the Lanzarote heat. Peter will tell you that he has been likened to Fred before but he was from Lancashire where as Peter is a Yorkshire man.
Peter has an incredible skill for drawing the streets of Yorkshire, he depicts the old mills and rows of terraced housing, brick by brick, and in fact presented us with a beautiful drawing that he had completed during the first days of the cruise. We chatted over coffee whilst he proudly showed us photographs of these amazing watercolours. There is so much detail and work involved in the paintings and they’re all created from memory.
Peter has been coming to Lanzarote for years, he enjoys the company of the local Spanish people and tells us of the time he arrived at Lanzarote airport to be singled out by the security men, which attracted a lot of attention from his fellow passengers only to be greeted like a long lost friend with hugs and handshakes – they were a family from a restaurant in Costa Teguise who he had got to know.
Peter would love to live in Lanzarote one day, he loves the heat, the people and the fact he could go sailing in his 20ft boat any day he wanted. Kim is a bit unsure. Whilst she likes the island, it would be hard to leave the green landscapes of the UK.
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