A LAKE District father-of-three is planning his dream family Christmas after scooping £381,582.80 in the Euromillions draw last Friday.

Hotelier Darren Hammond, 47, of Ambleside, described “screaming with delight” at the news after initially thinking he had won just £381.

And it was a double celebration for the family after Darren’s wife, Debra, won £10 in the same draw.

Darren, who is also a part-time firefighter with Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service, won with a Lucky Dip line after matching five main numbers and one Lucky Star.

“I play online and received an email to say: ‘Congratulations you have won’, but didn’t look at it at first because I thought it would just be a couple of pounds,” he said.

“When I logged in to my account I thought I had won £381. It took several minutes for it to sink in that I had actually won more than £381,000. I just didn’t see the extra numbers initially.

“I thought I was dreaming at first and I called Debra over to check, saying: ‘You’d better come and look at this, I think it says £381,000’.

“When we realised we really had won that much we just screamed with delight.

“We later discovered that Debra had won £10 in the same draw – not quite a win of the same size but it was certainly a lucky night for us.”

Darren, a coach with Ambleside Junior Football Club, said the win means he can provide a dream Christmas for sons Reece, 13, Luis, 10, and seven-year-old Jon-Luc.

“The win has come at the perfect time, just before Christmas," he said. “There will be lots of extra Christmas presents for the children and probably a few extra for my wife too. 2014 will be the best Christmas we have ever had.”

Darren and Debra said the boys were “quite non-plussed at the news, but one of them has asked for a new computer.”

Darren is also planning to buy a new family car and possibly a convertible for his wife too, adding that a new property in Ambleside ‘is also on the shopping list’.

But he continued: “We will definitely be saving some money - we want to be sensible about what we do and how we spend.

“We’re going to take our time over Christmas, calm down and let the news sink in.”

Darren plays EuroMillions online every week. He has two set lines and says he also plays Lucky Dip lines when he is feeling particularly lucky.

His winning numbers were: 2, 15, 28, 31, 37 and the Lucky Star 6.