FOR the last several years my wife and I have spent our summer holidays in Cornwall. This year we made the same journey but ended up in Kernow.

True, this ancient Celtic name for Cornwall didn't greet us on an official sign at the county's border. But the year when it does can't be far off. Anticipating the authorities by probably not very much, someone has painted Kernow on a rock that faces travellers entering the county on the A30 near Launceston.

We also found that many tourist leaflets are now, for the first time, titled in both standard English and its Cornish-Celtic equivalent. And the Cornish flag, rarely spotted until two or three years ago, now flutters extensively from cars, boats and buildings. Vaguely piratical with its white cross on black background, it probably yielded little to St George's during England's Euro 2004 campaign.

For not a few Cornish people regard Cornwall as a separate country. A booklet that I bought about its northernmost parish, Morwenstow, states: "This north-eastern tip of Cornwall is truly a remote triangle, separated from Devon and England (my italics) by the upper reaches of the Tamar Valley''.

This may be taking county pride jingoistically too far. Yet a recent survey showed that Cornwall has the strongest sense of county identity in Britain. And Cornish folk cherish the whole county, something, alas, that cannot be said of us northerners.

Fans of Leeds Utd, for example, take pleasure in taunting their Middlesbrough counterparts as "Yorkshire rejects'', believing, wrongly that Middlesbrough was expelled from Yorkshire with the local government changes of 1974. Within and without Tyne and Wear there has never been much expression of regret at the perceived severing of the conurbation from its parent counties. And though it has rightly been condemned as an eyesore, the neon marker erected by Durham County Council on its boundary near Sedgefield hasn't drawn the fundamental criticism that it doesn't stand on the county's true boundary. If it does, perhaps the county council will tell us what the neighbouring county is.

Cornwall was lucky in that the infamous 1974 changes left its boundary, the Tamar, intact. And this was despite the fact that, for centuries, Plymouth exerted strong influence on the corner of Cornwall, while, up around Morwenstow, the Tamar is a mere trickle, far less a border than the Tees in Teesdale ever was.

Yet Cornwall has kept its integrity. And woe betide anyone who would tamper with it now. Does it matter? Yes. For the intended carving of Britain into regions further threatens the concept of the counties. Yet, outside the big towns, most people still use these to define where they come from. Though it veers into the ridiculous with calls for home rule, Cornwall's mounting pride in its history and culture shows the way if county identities are to survive.

Another Cornwall change of recent years: the spread of windfarms. The local community near our base at Fowey is fighting one. Across Britain about 5,000 are expected to be built, with more pylons to feed their output to the grid. John Betjeman, that great Cornwall lover, got it right when he wrote: "And over all the land instead of trees, clean poles and wires will whisper in the breeze.''