I visited the Centre for Alternative Technology in July and had a really great day there, discovering the delights of solar energy, self-build houses and composting just about anything.
If that doesn't strike you as being a fun day out, then try it - you might be pleasantly surprised.

CAT is situated on the edge of Machynleth in Powys. It's a bus ride from the town and you get a discount if you arrive by public transport.
We arrived on the bus, complete with our tent and pitched it in the campsite next door to CAT.

From the ticket office, you ride on a water-balanced cliff railway to get to the rest of CAT. The view is great (assuming that it isn't raining too much!).
Once you are at the top then you are free to browse as the mood takes you. There's a welcome video, lots of examples of self-build houses made of wood and straw, vegetable and flower gardens, a small-holding, solar heating systems and loads more.

Half way round, the smell of lunch was too much for us so we stopped for an organic salad, organic cake and organic beer - all really yummy - then we continued slightly squiffily round the rest of CAT.
The shop held many temptations; lots of great gift ideas for children, books, cards, science kits, environmentally friendly stuff, food etc. I bought a book on self-composting toilets but I haven't built one yet!

I came away buzzing with ideas for living more sustainably from weeing on straw bales to make compost,and feeding waste meat scraps to the worms in my wormery to growing plants like comfrey to keep slugs off my other plants(instead of using slug pellets).

Since we've been to CAT we've chucked more things on our compost heap (cardboard packaging for one) and discovered all the great resources on their web site - lots of tips for sustainable projects such as building your own solar powered heating systems.

I was hoping that building a self-composting toi
let would be straight-forward, and I guess that it probably is if you have plenty of space outside to build one (which I haven't). The book didn't recommend using the compost it produces on anything but decorative plants, so for the effort of building it and then using it (not to mention cleaning it!) I reckon that weeing on your compost heap is probably good enough!
I did use the one at CAT though and thought it was great!

CAT also have an on-line shop and mail order catalogue (there's even a bridal gift service though I'm not sure I'd have wanted books on composting as my wedding presents!)

As well as visiting CAT's main site we also went to their health food shop and cafe in the middle of Machynlleth. Both were packed with yummy delights and kept us well fed for the whole weekend.

I thought that CAT was great. I had an inspiring day which was also relaxed and good fun. Well worth a visit!