Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birth place of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, a lot of whose stories are embeded in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has an extremely rich archaeological landscape, the site of various Iron Age brochs as well as an early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological study, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty. In boyhood we learn more about every square backyard of it. We incorporate it physically and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and an occasionally visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken as well as vanishing bunny scuts, a wide range of wild flower and small bird life, the soaring hawk, the unforeseen roe, the old graveyard, ideas of the folk that once lived much inland in straths and also hollows, the past and today kept in a moment of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old town college.