Contrary to mischievous rumour, Sir John Major does not live on another planet. When he famously waxed lyrical about a green and pleasant land, in which warm beer and village cricket are eternal virtues, he was not fantasising. He was describing a place that exists, and which he knows well because he was its MP for almost two decades.

Huntingdonshire is not so much a county as a state of mind. In fact it is no longer a county, since being swallowed by Cambridgeshire in 1974, but it remains determinedly a separate entity in all but name. It is a land of thatched cottages and timber-framed pubs by the banks of the Great Ouse, of historic market towns, wildflower meadows and old mills by streams, and it is doing its best to stay that way.

It has the largest meadow in England, an inland sea of buttercups and birdsong on the outskirts of Huntingdon that is owned curiously by the London Anglers’ Association. This is because it floods most winters, providing an ideal habitat for marsh dandelions, voles and anglers from Essex.

In high summer, Portholme Meadow stretches to far horizons of woodland and church spires like a scene from a Hardy novel, a haven for corn bunting and skylarks flitting above a dazzling array of more than 200 species of wildflowers.

It is a place for poets to muse, and where local diarist Samuel Pepys observed in 1662: “...country-maids milking their cows there... and with what mirth they come all home together in pomp with their milk, and sometimes they have musique go before them.”

Huntingdonshire was swallowed by its neighbour in 1974 Credit: GETTY

Amid all this bucolic allure there have been stirrings of revolt, as befits a place that gave the world Oliver Cromwell. A Huntingdonshire Society is agitating for the return of county status that it traces to 920 AD, when Edward the Elder established an Anglo-Saxon shire. It has decreed Cromwell’s birthday on April 25 as Huntingdonshire Day, when town criers travel the length and breadth of the shire – admittedly not very far – proclaiming its independence.

In a similar vein the Hunts Post waged a campaign to safeguard rural services and amenities threatened by bureaucrats and urban sprawl, and to prevent Huntingdonshire from becoming an anonymous urban crossroads on the edge of the London commuter belt.

It remains a land of thatched cottages and timber-framed pubs, wildflower meadows and old mills by streams Credit: GETTY

“It’s not so much the name of the shire that matters, it’s the way of life that people consider important,” one of its reporters told me. “Huntingdonshire is historic, it’s where we belong.”

To find out what’s so special about this rustic heart of England, I walked to St Ives with my dog Patch along the banks of the Great Ouse from Houghton and back again. It was a few years ago now, but I am assured little has changed in this rural backwater and it remains one of the loveliest stretches of inland waterway in the country.

This is Wind in the Willows country, where men potter in a procession of odd looking craft in accordance with the Water Rat’s dictum that there is nothing half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.

"This is Wind in the Willows country" Credit: getty

One of the best places to observe this ritual is from a wooden bench in the shade of a willow tree on Holt Island, a mini-world of willows and butterflies anchored in the river near St Ives. Once a commercial Osier bed, where women stripped the willow in the first weeks of May for weaving into baskets, it has been preserved as a wildlife sanctuary. This is where Patch, being part labrador and part otter, jumped into the river and discovered the inadvisability of swimming anywhere near a swan.

When we arrived in Houghton, smoke was drifing from a barbecue at a church fete, amid bunting and tables laden with second hand books and home-made jams, in a quintessential image of rural England defiantly celebrating summer beneath grey skies. We even heard the call of the common warbler: “More tea, vicar?”

A lane leads from the church past timber-framed cottages to Houghton Mill, a restored 17th-century cornmill on an island in the Ouse that looks as if it was built expressly for Constable to paint. It is one of those absurdly picturesque scenes that conjure images of a rural idyll before the intrusion of the infernal combustion engine.

Houghton Mill Credit: getty

Strolling by the old mill sets one to musing that this is the kind of shire that produced the bowmen who turned the tide at Agincourt. It probably would do so again if required, only nowadays the local yeomanry fly fighter aircraft from RAF bases.

Remember the rhyming riddle about going to St Ives and meeting a man with seven wives? As Patch and I were going to St Ives we did not encounter any known bigamists, but we met a man cycling, a lady jogging, and a couple wearing sweatshirts with dogs on them who made a fuss of Patch.

This cavalcade passed us by on Thicket Road, a tree-lined footpath that meanders by vestiges of rich grasslands and wildflower meadows that once covered farmland in southern England. Here be cowslip, yellow rattle and green-winged orchids, and vernal grass that gives hay its distinctive sweet smell. As we walked along the skies cleared, the sun dappled the path with light and warmth, and there seemed no better place to be for a man and his dog.

"There seemed no better place to be for a man and his dog" Credit: getty

Inevitably we encountered Huntingdonshire’s most famous son in St Ives. Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, was standing stonily on a pedestal in the market square, one arm cradling a Bible and the other pointing disapprovingly at a bright red Japanese motorbike parked beneath him. He clearly considered it a blasphemy.

We retreated from his stern gaze to a shady spot by the river for lunch, and passed an indolent hour observing the venerable English pastime of chaps in boats bumping into lock gates and each other with profuse apologies.

That evening our quest for fine ales in a dog-friendly pub took us to The Wheatsheaf at Perry, where we found a pleasing array of hand-pumps and dog biscuits for the comfort of man and beast. It was peaceful until the door burst open and a dozen women in long green dresses with bells on their shoes breezed in. They were accompanied by men wearing straw boaters, green waistcoats and white stockings and carrying flutes, drums and accordions.

Sir John Major should have been there. The country dance group from St Neots epitomised all he holds dear in his home shire, a hearty bunch of enthusiasts preserving their cultural heritage for the fun of it.

In preparation for a dance festival, they trooped outside to go through their routines in the pub forecourt. At first the audience comprised myself, Patch and two curious children on skateboards, as they swung into a Durham Reel, followed by “a carnival dance, all the way from Stockport.”

As streamers flew and ropes twined to the beat of tambourines, the crowd swelled and soon the kids were being roped into the rhythmic mayhem of 18th-century folk dances.

Much later, we left the pub to the strains of a sing-song and a lusty voice intoning: “Bring me the punch ladle, I’ll fathom the bowl.” It was what you might call a good punch line.

The five-mile circular walk between Houghton and St Ives is part of the 142-mile Ouse Valley Way. Info from Huntingdonshire Association for Tourism (01480 537624; www.huntingdon-accommodation.org.uk). See our guide to the best hotels in Cambridgeshire.