Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birthplace of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, a lot of whose books are set in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a very abundant historical landscape, the site of various Iron Age brochs and an early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn composed: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty. In boyhood we learn more about every square lawn of it. We incorporate it literally as well as our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout as well as a periodically visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and also disappearing bunny scuts, a wide range of wild blossom as well as little bird life, the skyrocketing hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the folk that when lived much inland in straths and also hollows, the past and the present held in a moment of day-dream." ('My Little Bit Of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old town institution.