Dwti Draig

So, what on earth is Dwti? What is Dwti Draig, and how do you say it?

Lyn and I are very proud to be Welsh, and there was never any doubt our Overlander would somehow have a Welsh theme. The name of Dwti came from Lyn trying to convince me that having a lorry to convert to travel would be a good idea. I definitely needed a lot of convincing for this, as I was more than happy with our Hymer motorhome. He tried to convince me that an 18 tonne lorry was “only dwti !” If I can now explain that dwti is a welsh word that comes from the word “dwt”….

“Dwt (rhymes with ‘put’) is an appropriately dinky word for a dinky thing. If you are a dwt or dwty you are cute, sweet and small in stature” (BBC).

Yeah, right! Since when has an 18 tonne lorry ever been seen as dinky? When I started looking at such lorries I would never have imagined that I could ever come to see one as cute and sweet, but I guess time changes you!

The draig part comes from the Welsh word for dragon, an integral part of our Welsh heritage. There is absolutely no doubt that we can claim absolutely the best flag in the world, and our lorry had to reflect that. So we now had Dwti Draig, the cute, dinky dragon. 

You can pronounce it by rhyming dwti with sooty, and draig as dry-g. 

We had a slight wobble about colour, but came to agree (in other words I won!) that Dwti had to be red, for obvious reasons. This simple decision was not as easy as it might appear. Oh no. It had to be red, but what red? We knew we didn’t want a Fire Engine Red. Or a Postman Pat Red. It had to be a specific red, and in order to find that elusive colour, that we trusted we would know it was THE ONE when we found it! This involved many, many many trips to car showrooms in the local area to try to narrow it down a bit. Eventually we settled on Land Rover Firenze red. We passed the RAL colour onto Motorcraft, and then sat back and waited. 

In a couple of weeks they sent us a photo…… but we were worried. It looked so bright; just what we didn’t want. This was a big deal; we definitely couldn’t afford to have it resprayed, so we drove the 230 miles to Doncaster to see it in real life. 

To say we were nervous was an understatement. Imagine we hated it and had to live with an expensive dragon that resembled Postman Pat’s van? It was a tense, fraught drive, with me worrying that I had made a huge mistake I would never be allowed to forget.

We got to the Motorcraft yard and there she was, out in full view and shining in all her beautiful deep red glory. No hint of fire engines or postal vans, just a big majestic dragon. Lyn was happy, and I could finally breathe out. Time to turn around and drive the 230 miles back, with a huge sense of relief.