I FEAR the Mediterranean's beaches in summer. The idea of fighting the rest of Europe for a patch of sand brings me out in a cold sweat. It's not just the crowds; it's the heat. When you have two ginger kids it's a shade-hopping marathon of sunscreen smearing and keeping hats on heads.

What I need is a resort with great beaches where there is decent weather but the kids won't torch the soles of their feet flitting between beach towel and the water's edge, and which hasn't been overrun by visitors from the rest of the Continent. Could there be such a place? I was told that Latvia might have what I was looking for.

The spa-resort town of Jurmala is strung out along a 30km (20-mile) stretch of very gently shelving white sandy beach, 15 miles from Riga airport. It is a resort from another time; undeveloped with 19th-century mansions in the pine woods along with sanatoriums and some hideous concrete hotels, where in Soviet days 300,000 Communist Party workers came every year for reward holidays.

Things are changing, however. The Russian new rich are moving in and “renovating” the beautiful villas. Some are done tastefully but often huge, inappropriate extensions on beautiful wood do not gel. A number of houses have been destroyed in mysterious fires and enormous new homes built in their place. “Russians! Mafia!” sneered one local, gesticulating at a particularly hideous creation.

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We stayed in Villa Villakula, a late-19th-century wood house with Art Nouveau influences, 180m (200 yards) from the beach. It was bright and airy inside with blond wooden floors and windows offering glimpses of trees and lush grass.

There is a reason that the grass was so lush. In recent years the summers here have been good, but the season is short. We stayed into the first week of September and there was an autumnal feel, with housekeepers sweeping the first leaves from the porches of empty mansions. Locals told us that July had been hot, but we had to dodge the rain showers.

Or not dodge them. “Come on, Dad!” chided my three-year-old boy when I wavered about heading into spitting rain. There was a moment, as I was crouched on the beach in a deluge, following my son's instructions for digging a moat, as my wife pushed our baby daughter into the trees, when I wondered if I had made a mistake. Over the week we had enough decent weather to have a good time, but I would suggest going earlier in the season.

The beach was regularly swept and two stretches fly the EU blue flag. Locals kept recommending the aqua- park in Jurmala, which boasts that it is the largest in the Baltic region. Older kids would no doubt love it, but it looked hellish and I reasoned that my kids were too young. My son was not convinced and had to be distracted every time we passed it.

The main entertainment focus is in the district of Majori, where children can ride carousels and gorge themselves on wild blueberries sold from roadside stalls. Adults can play “spot the mafiosi” as men in dark glasses escort blondes into restaurants.

We ate well. Particularly good were dumplings smothered in cheese and mushrooms at Slavu, a Russian restaurant, and garlic shrimp at an Armenian place. Black caviar was expensive in the Caviar Club at the Baltic Beach Hotel, but a lunch of blinis with red caviar for £11 did not seem exorbitant on a bright day, after a swim in the pool and a massage.

Ah yes, the spa treatments. The sulphur springs and mineral-rich mud have been attracting visitors since the 18th century. At the plush Baltic Beach Hotel I was ushered into the inner sanctum of Irina Lapaine, the hotel's mud specialist. She made me disrobe and put on the skimpiest thong ever devised for the humiliation of man, and a shower hat. She then slapped mineral-rich black mud from Crimea all over me. “Beautiful,” she said when she was done. “There is nothing comparable in Europe.” I think she was talking about the mud.

She wrapped me in polythene and a blanket and left me for a bit. Then I had a shower. I felt warm and tingly and all for £15. The hotel offers a huge range of treatments and at that price it was unsurprising that tourists were booking several each.

Riga is half an hour away on a great clunking Soviet train and is worth a day trip. You can have lunch in a cobbled square in the Old Town, a Unesco World Heritage Site, and the Art Nouveau architecture is reputedly the best in Europe, although with two kids in tow we didn't find the best of it. There is not a huge amount on offer for children in the capital.

Jurmala does not have the sophistication of the French Riviera, but that accounts for its charm. If you want an alternative to the Med's roasting climate, give this corner of the Baltic a try. But go soon, before it becomes a Russian gangsters' paradise.

NEED TO KNOW

Damian Whitworth travelled with Baltic Travel Company (0870 7537747, www.baltictravelcompany.com). Villa Villakula sleeps eight and costs £1,050-£1,400 a week or from £175 a night.

Getting there Flights from Gatwick to Riga with Air Baltic (www.airbaltic.com) can be arranged by Baltic Travel from £140 return. Ryanair (0871 2460000, www.ryanair.com) flies to Riga from UK airports.

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