Rāzna

Rāzna, declared in 2007, is the youngest of Latvia's national parks and the anchor of Latgale's lake district in the country's far southeast. At its centre lies Rāzna itself — Latvia's second-largest lake by surface and its largest body of water by volume, broad enough that locals call it the inland sea — set among hummocky glacial hills that hide dozens of smaller lakes, including deep, island-dotted Ežezers.

This is a cultural landscape as much as a natural one. Latgale is Latvia's Catholic borderland, and the park's villages come with roadside crosses, blue-domed chapels, and a strong potter's tradition. The set-piece view is from Mākoņkalns, the "cloud hill", where the scraps of Volkenberg castle — a thirteenth-century Livonian Order outpost — crown a wooded knoll above the whole spread of the lake.

What's worth knowing before you go

The park is for unhurried travel: swimmable coves and sandy shallows on Rāzna's northern shore, rowing boats and pike-perch dinners from lakeside guesthouses, and short climbs like Mākoņkalns rather than long trails. Ežezers with its thirty-odd islands is the paddler's pick.

Rēzekne, half an hour north, is the rail gateway from Riga; after that you are on rural roads where a car — or touring bicycle, the country is made for it — is the way around. July warms the lake to genuine swimming temperature; late August brings mushroom baskets out along every forest road.