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The Centre for Alternative Technology, just outside Machynlleth, was looking very eco the day we were there, with lots of eco-puddles on the pathways and eco drips on the tips of our noses. In fact, the eco was descending in a thick quilt from the heavens, flushing the sustainable village's reed bed toilets, swelling its organic vegetables and maintaining its hydro-power potential very nicely, thank you. Meanwhile, beyond the village peripheries, the Welsh hills were getting greener and greener - that irridescent, viridescent green that looks so wonderful on sunny days. Useful stuff, rain.

A healthy (and thankfully short-lived) deluge was entirely appropriate given that we'd come to mid-Wales expressly for an eco-weekend, to experience the fuller flavour of living closer to the land. It wasn't that we were aiming to be particularly hardline about it, but we'd decided to stay in a cottage rather than a hotel, to source our food from farmers rather than going shopping, and to spend a day at the above-mentioned CAT, one of this nation's foremost shrines for the worship of alternative lifestyles.

We were also planning on saving on the bathwater and swimming in one of the local lakes, until a lady in the tourist office pointed out that what might be eco for us may not be so eco for the people of Birmingham; the lakes were, after all, their drinking water supply.

The cottage was in the grounds of farmhouse-cum-guesthouse Beili Neuadd near the small town of Rhayader, in a garden setting with ponds and lawns which was ideal pootling territory for the grandparents, who'd come along too. The best bit, as far as the children were concerned, were the owners' two dogs, Monty and Titian, who were willing to be exercised down country lanes by two urban rats who'd no chance of pets of their own. I have never seen them more keen on going for a walk.

Sourcing fruit and veg from the local pick-your-own farm was another unlikely hit. It produced reminiscences from the grandparents on the happier side of war-time years, and a useful lesson for the children in how the food chain doesn't just begin on supermarket shelves. Daughter Rhena, seven, who'd otherwise never knowingly let a vegetable pass her lips, had a lunch composed entirely of peas eaten straight from the pod.

Sourcing meat direct from a local farmer turned out to be a touch less healthy. "You townies," he teased, rummaging about in his freezer, "you're obsessed by lean. Myself, I like a good bit of fat." He wasn't particularly lean himself, and it became clear why when he revealed his recipe for a slap-up dinner: drop a knob of butter on a slab of cow and bung it in the microwave. And given the size of the piece of meat, there wasn't room on his plate for any fripperies such as vegetables.

There wasn't much talk of meat in the Centre for Alternative Technology, for this is an award-winning example of what steps we can take in our own lives to make our world last longer. As the voiceover in the show in CAT's strawbale theatre pointed out, "earth is one big creature working together / if we don't interfere, it should last forever". So not much chance of that, then.

In fact CAT is an entertaining and stimulating visitor attraction in its own right, and you don't have to put on a pair of sandals and foreswear meat-eating to get in. The idea first took root in a former quarry just outside Machynlleth in the 1970s, and the idealists behind it - the founder was an old Etonian called Gerard Morgan-Grenville - have enlarged it steadily ever since, attracting half a million visitors every year. Twelve people still live permanently on site and they and all the facilities are pretty much self-sustaining, with a supply of solar and hydro power (excess is sold to the national grid), fruit and vegetable gardens, a reed-bed sewerage system and free range hens all over the place. The on-site restaurant is, naturally, deliciously vegetarian.

This is not an encampment of wigwams and anti-motorway protesters, but sophisticated green technology in action. It is at its most impressive right at the entrance, in a cliff railway designed to carry visitors from the car park up to the village plateau. The railway is run by water; passengers climb into the bottom car, thus making it heavier, whereupon water is released into tanks in the top car to balance it out. When there is sufficient weight up above, the top car descends, pulling the bottom one up.

Simple science-in-action like this is something that my son, who is nine, can readily understand, so when CAT's children's workshop offered him the chance to make something out of bits of cardboard, polystyrene and a solar panel attached to a propeller, he was very happy to be left there. The net result was an airplane he called Science Air, and its propeller spun quite happily even under the cloudy sky.

There were several other interactive attractions that the children particularly enjoyed: a lavatory cistern which turned a mill wheel when you pulled the chain, a tank in which, if you could make waves that were big enough, you generated enough power to light up a lighthouse, and the Mole Hole, an underground cave with spooky enlargements of below-ground organisms, CAT's version of a haunted house.

For adults the centre was a touch more didactic, with examples of sustainable architecture in cut-away houses to demonstrate how much more environmentally friendly our lifestyles could be if we tried.

Outside, there's a display of gardening without soil, of how to be kind to slugs and still keep them away from your vegetables, and even a compost degustation which includes, amongst others, trays of grass cuttings with...well, perhaps we won't mention that in polite society. In fact, if the diagrams in the loos are to be believed, even leaving a personal deposit at CAT seems to be making a positive contribution towards the environment.

Ultimately the centre wasn't off-puttingly evangelistic or holier-than-thou. On the way out we found a postcard in the centre's shop which bore a simple message about the state of life, the world, everything. "Things are getting worse," it said. "Please send chocolate".

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