Things you didn't know about... Clwyd

Wales as a whole has more castles per head than anywhere else in the world, and Clwyd and north-east Wales are lucky enough boast a particularly rich selection of them. Rhuddlan castle, near Rhyl, for example, has a massive twin-towered gatehouse.

Clwyd is full of ancient sites with connections to King Arthur. One theory is that Avalon, said to be Arthur's final resting place, is to be found in the small village of Rhosesmor, near Mold, the county town of Clwyd. Other sites include a stone in Ruthin, where Arthur is supposed to have beheaded a rival in love; a rock formation near Denbigh called Arthur's Table; and even places where Arthur's famous sword Excalibur and the Holy Grail are said to be buried.

The town of Llangollen, in Clwyd, is famous for its International Eisteddfod, when folk singers and dancers arrive from all over the world to take part in cultural festival.

Clwyd is the birthplace of Monty Python's Terry Jones and James Bond star Timothy Dalton. The explorer HM Stanley (of "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" fame) was born in Denbigh.

Clwyd has a professional football team, Wrexham FC, which, like Swansea and Cardiff, participates in the English football league despite being in Wales. The club is best known for a giant-killing win over Arsenal in the 1992 FA Cup.

The first realistic plans to build the Channel Tunnel were drawn up by civil engineer William Low in Clywd in the 1860s. He bought land near Dover and Calais and even built 1,000 yards of the tunnel—before realising the French could use it to invade Britain.

The most famous artefact produced in Clwyd was a gold cape, which was discovered in a Bronze Age burial mound in 1833. It is 4,000 years old, weighs 560 grams and is made from 23-carat gold. The cape is now in the British Museum in London and is regarded as one of the museum's most significant exhibits. There has long been a campaign to have the cape returned to Clwyd.

The Welsh-speaking actor Rhys Ifans, who played Hugh Grant's flatmate in the 1999 film Notting Hill, grew up in Clwyd and attended youth acting schools at Theatr Clwyd. His most famous on-screen moment in the film was meeting the press outside the front door—dressed only in his rather grey Y-fronts.