When the temperature in Tunisia reached 46 degrees C - that's a scorching 115 degrees to anyone older than about 40 - a couple of days before I was planning to go there, I began to wonder whether August in North Africa was a sensible idea for a young family.

As it turned out, me, my wife, our two-year-old daughter Lola and five-month-old son Seth, had a great time and we have been recommending it to friends with young kids ever since.

I take a summer holiday with my in-laws every year - my wife's parents, her brother and his wife and their six-year-old daughter Chloe - and we invariably go to a villa, usually somewhere in France. This year, we decided to go the same week that both my father-in-law Graham and brother-in-law Phil celebrated their birthdays. As it was Phil's 40th, we decided we wanted to stay somewhere a little nicer than usual.

As anyone who has tried to find a French villa in the middle of August will tell you, you often need to take out a second mortgage. For a stylish villa on the Côte d'Azur with a swimming pool and close to the beach, you are looking at £3,000 a week and most required a two week booking. Adding to the difficulty in finding somewhere appropriate, it also needed to have a table tennis table, which some see as strange but when your wife and father-in-law are former champions at ping-pong - don't tell them I called it that - it's a holiday essential.

After hours of fruitless searching for the perfect villa, we gave up. In a moment of frustration, I suggested going to a cheaper country but staying in a five-star hotel instead. Incredibly, everyone agreed.

This is how we ended up on a Panorama package holiday to Tunisia, paying £670 per adult for a week's half-board. It was totally different from what we had originally thought but it worked well.

Travelling time to Tunisia is not much longer than to the south of France, around three hours, and the country's most popular resort, Hammamet, is just a tantrum-avoiding hour away from Monastir airport.

Hammamet started its development into the tourist resort we know today in the mid-1920s when the Romanian millionaire Georges Sebastian built a luxury villa here. Visiting friends enjoyed what they saw and started to build their own properties on this beautiful stretch of Mediterranean coast.

Most recently, the resort has expanded rapidly with a new development called Yasmine Hammamet, named after the jasmine flowers that fill the air with their sweet fragrance. This stretches south of the original town and is unashamedly upmarket, with a marina full of expensive yachts and 11 five-star hotels and 25 four-stars.

Ratings in some countries are notoriously dodgy but the five-star Alhambra Thalasspa, where we stayed, was certainly worthy of its rank. The hotel is run by German chain Maritim but is far more cosmopolitan than this might suggest. We were the only people from our transfer bus staying at the hotel but there was a good smattering of Brits, as well as French, Germans, Italians and Algerians.

By the time we had arrived, the mercury had dropped from its highs of a few days previously but it was still in the mid 30s, yet the low humidity meant it was eminently bearable, especially sitting under a parasol by the huge central pool.

Here, as well as the obligatory open-air table tennis table, there was a poolside bar and restaurant serving freshly caught grilled sea bream, enormous salads and chips and pizza for the less adventurous.

We had also been attracted by mention in the brochure of a kiddies pool but this turned out to be situated in a windswept corner of the hotel. In fact, in the whole week we saw no-one using it. It didn't matter; the kids were entranced by the big pool and happily spent most of the week immersed in it. On a couple of occasions, we walked the five minutes down the road to the hotel's private beach. The 'private' bit was really irrelevant apart from getting a sunbed. Like everyone else on this coast, you had acces to a classically gorgeous stretch of Mediterranean fine white sand with a gentle slope into tepid bath-temperature salted water.

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Food is central to any holiday with kids. On the flight over, we had convinced the kids that people in Tunisia ate nothing but tuna so they were happy to see a hotel buffet heaving with a huge selection of things, ranging from fresh fruit and spaghetti to highly spiced Tunisian lamb and aubergine casserole. A table crammed with sticky and chocolately desserts was especially popular with the youngsters.

It seems a huge generalisation to say that all Tunisians love children but the staff seemed to have limitless enthusiasm to coo over Seth and exchange chit chat with Lola, despite her attempts to remain aloof.

Although our hotel was the furthest south on the Yasmine Hammamet strip, getting into the busy centre was easy. Taxis are plentiful and incredibly cheap. The ten minute taxi ride from the hotel to the marina, which is surrounded by lots of bars and restaurants, is around five dinar or £2. The downside is that they drive fast and some do not have seatbelts, so find one that does before putting the kids in the back seat.

The marina area is particularly fun for kids. There are stalls selling brightly coloured local clothes, pottery and other trinkets and, best of all, a mini theme park of several huge bouncy castles, which cost a couple of dinar for ten minutes bouncing. The pirate ship with huge inflatable slides proved such a hit that we were hounded to come back here again and again.

When we settled on coming to Tunisia, we had grand ideas about taking day-trips to see Carthage or a longer expedition to the south to see where some of Star Wars was filmed but those things went out of the window. In the end, we were having such a relaxing time with the family by the pool , we just couldn't be bothered. And when family holidays can rank with divorce and moving house for stress, that's saying something.

The kids came back without being burned to a cinder and excitedly babbling about their holidays. We're certainly planning on going back.

Need to know

Seven nights half board at the Maritim Alhambra Thalasso for two adults, one child and an infant costs £1,561.50 in August 2007, including flights from Gatwick and transfers, with Panorama (0870 7595595, www.panoramaholidays.co.uk).

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