Ask a fervent Cornishman what makes him most proud and he will bypass the cliches.
Forget the surfing, the Eden Project, the clotted cream or even the pasties; nothing beats the intense satisfaction of a Cornish-reared prop forward being chosen for England. To have two local front-row men starting against New Zealand tomorrow is the stuff of modern legend.
Trevor Woodman and Phil Vickery, who first pulled on boots at Liskeard and Bude respectively, have already bonded in their country's cause on four of the five occasions Woodman has featured as a late England replacement.
Now there is no mistaking their mutual delight at finally being picked to start together, the completion of a long, unlikely journey which should inspire every teenager from west of the Tamar.
The pair's tale of triumph over the twin odds of geography and metropolitan bias is also an evocative one. Woodman, five months younger than his better-known 26-year-old Gloucester team-mate, is the epitome of a fast, mobile professional loose-head and well remembers first meeting Vickery.
He says: "We were playing down at Bude comprehensive in eight inches of mud and you would never have thought me and him would one day be turning out at Twickenham against the All Blacks. I was a tight-head then so we weren't directly opposite each other, which was a blessing because he was already about 20 stone at the age of 11."
The Cornish schoolboy selectors swiftly saw the benefits of picking two beefy farm boys in the same front row but Woodman, who was stacking bales in the fields around Liskeard before he was 12, took a slower road to professional prominence.
He had spells at Plymouth Albion and Bath - "We used to take the mickey out of him at England Colts because he was playing for Bath's third team," says Vickery - before moving to Gloucester to be reunited with his old friend in a shared house in Longlevens which, by most accounts, made Men Behaving Badly seem like the Waltons.
Cooking consisted of "a variation of takeaways". Woodman, aka Doug the Slug or Ferrari Trev and a man who, by mutual consent, can edge out "Raging Bull" Vickery in both bench-press and sprint tests, well remembers the pair's impromptu indoor wrestling bouts. He says: "We had the odd scrap and I've still got a few scars. It was just playful stuff to annoy each other. We kept going until we got bored or tired."
In their four years as house-mates, Woodman's Test career never quite took hold. He came close to starting against Wales in Cardiff in 2001 but then "went off the boil" for a variety of reasons. A bulging disc in his neck which was causing weakness down his right arm took months to heal and he also fell foul of Philippe Saint-André's squad rotation at Kingsholm.
With Patrice Collazo's return to France this season, however, he secured a regular place and his form has duly returned.
"What Trevor needed was to play rugby every week and he wasn't getting that last year," says Andy Robinson, England's coach. With Jason Leonard nearing his sell-by date and Graham Rowntree injured, Woodman has every incentive to achieve Test-level consistency as well. If, as Vick ery expects, Woodman thrives in the spotlight, it will also replenish Cornish rugby lore.
Some still quote the case of Redruth's Bert Solomon, the finest centre of his day, who travelled up to London on the milk train to make a successful debut against Wales in 1910, only to decline all future invitations because he felt ill-at-ease in the public school-dominated dressing room.
Subsequent folk heroes such as Richard Sharp and "Stack" Stevens, the farmer from Godolphin who became a Lion, have followed but far too much raw talent has gone to waste. With luck this should change shortly because the Rugby Football Union has launched a south-west regional academy for 16 to 18-year-olds, with training in Truro, Ivybridge, Barnstaple and Exeter.
Vickery fully supports the effort to halt the brawn drain, saying: "It's terrible when I think back to the talented kids I played with who have stopped playing. It's a combination of not having a professional side and people not getting down there and seeing what's about. If you had a team from Cornwall in the Premiership it would be bloody fantastic."
If it does happen the next generation will have two splendid role models.
