The Chief Constable of North Wales has a tough reputation for manning police speed cameras on his days off, but today he showed a softer side to his character when he was inaugurated as a druid.

Richard Brunstrom took his place in a procession of robe-wearing new recruits on the rain-swept field of the National Eisteddfod as he joined an order of Welsh poets, the Gorsedd of Bards.

Membership is the highest honour bestowed by the annual Welsh language festival, granted only to those deemed to have made a significant contribution to Wales’s language and culture.Gorsedd members wear green, blue or white to denote their standing. As a member of the highest rank Mr Brunstrom wore a white robe.

Mr Brunstrom is known to readers of the Police Federation’s official magazine as "the godfather of the speed camera", but Eisteddfod-goers can now address him as "Spider", after he took the Welsh translation Prif Copyn as his bardic title. It is a pun on the Welsh phrase for chief constable (prif gwnstabl). He is also famed as the first chief constable to have his own blog.

Mr Brunstrom and the other new members touched the blade of a 6ft 6ins ceremonial sword - carried by its keeper, Ray Gravell, a Welsh rugby legend - before receiving their head-dress on stage.

Conversation on the podium threatened to be a little stilted however, as Selwyn Iolen, the Archdruid who presided over today’s ceremony, recently got a speeding ticket from North Wales Police when he was rushing home to see the second half of a football match.

Told that the Archdruid had been caught doing 36mph in a 30mph zone, Mr Brunstrom said: "They always are, aren’t they?" He added: "I hold the Archdruid in very high regard and as he was saying on the stage, it’s very important to have a sense of humour and he’s certainly got one, and that makes it better.""Forget the three points, that’s what he told me," the Archdruid joked after the ceremony. "I don’t think he meant it though, or he would get the sack."

Mr Brunstrom, 52, who has been learning Welsh for five years, said that he was "extremely proud" to receive the honour. "It’s finding the time to practise the language that’s hard," he said.

"I don’t think I have ever felt English. I’m a passionate European and I’m passionately in support of devolution in Wales. I don’t think my wife understands this. She doesn’t speak Welsh. She’s not interested.

"Among the others inaugurated into the Gorsedd today were Robin McBryde, a former international rugby player, and Prys Morgan, a historian and brother of Rhodri Morgan, Wales’s First Minister.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is already a member of the Gorsedd of Bards, which is sometimes wrongly thought to be an ancient pagan sect. It was in fact invented by a stonemason called Edward Williams on Primrose Hill, London, in 1792.

The inauguration ceremony takes place in a ring of standing stones which remain on the site after the touring festival departs. Modern Eisteddfods leave a portable legacy in the form of plastic stones.

Today’s ceremony near Swansea, complete with hymn singing and a flower dance performed by schoolgirls, was however held in the literature tent because of pouring rain.

The event finished with the sword symbolically put back in its scabbard as the Archdruid makes three requests for peace.