Living in Paris a few years ago, I made friends with a Welsh man with two moustaches who often spoke of a lost world hidden in the valleys to the west of Cardiff. At the time, je doubted it but when we parted ways, it was there that he was headed to become the resident chef and live out the back of a lorry. Over a final café, I promised to meet him there, next year when the moon was fat.

The year passed and I was forced to return to our green and pleasant land, penniless and adrift. As the moon waxed night by night and with nothing better to do except face the ugly mug of unemployment, I decided to catch the £1 Megabus from London to Cardiff.

6 hours later, the Not-So-Mega bus (which had managed to get lost on the M4! perhaps in an effort to disorientate the passengers so that they’d never find the magic land again) dropped me off at the castle and I was reunited with the chef and his moustaches. We hacked out of the congestion in his dishevelled runabout, straight into twisting and turning rural lanes, stopping to do a deal with the dentist and have a quick pint of Brains. It was as the bloody moon rose magnificently out of the horizon after a long year of anticipation that we eventually arrived at the fabled ‘Coed Hill Rural Arts Space’.

In reality, Coed Hills is home to a handful of the self-termed ‘great unwashed’: hippies and eco-maniacs living very merrily off the fat o’ the land. It is a beautiful place – aesthetically and in principle. The whole enterprise is open to the public by way of an exhibition to demonstrate how a sustainable and creative lifestyle is only a brave decision away for any of us. The residents communally raise a smattering of toddlers and mangey dogs on site, living in yurts, tippees, straw-bale houses and a converted barn. They grow their own food, they drink plenty of nettle tea and they manage.

Welsh valleys have been hippy havens for years, since tippee valley was set up in the 60s. Coed Hills is a younger, more accessible modern-day arrangement. Of course it’s a magnet for funding, having happily stumbled into a zeitgeist: what was once the very fringiest of existences is now a hub for school groups wanting living examples of renewable energy hard at work.

Perhaps the best thing about Coed Hills though for me is the degree of intrinsic creativity. Yes, the long-drop toilets are painted gaily and the herb garden is prettily labelled with shells and swirls of rope but if you take a hike into the peripheries of the property, you begin to discover ‘art’.

One of the dogs will show you the way. If you give them a biscuit, they know the score and will scamper off ahead to lead you to the next biscuit dispensing unit in the wood. As you saunter along the overgrown pathways you encounter a range of installations, updated from time to time when a resident or visiting artist feels the urge or ‘the management’ decrees it’s time for a new theme. In a 2 hour yomp, I uncovered the work of a dozen artists, interacting with the landscape and arresting my attention considerably. I particularly enjoyed sitting amongst the felt-wrapped stone circle with its astonishing view and my Kendal mint cake as well as hiding under the legs of the Alice in Wonderlandesque furniture of epic proportions.

If you’re alone, as I was, it can get a bit freaky, especially if your guide-dog has chased off after a fretful white rabbit. People live in these woods on the most threadbare of existences and although they seem charming, apparently rational people in the bright light of an open field, your mind begins to Blair Witch with you in dense vegetation. Is everything quite as it seems when you turn the corner to discover a zombie trap? Or more shuddering real, a Totem Pole studded with human teeth?

I was very happy to return to a freshly cooked chicken dinner... or was it?