Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the native home of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, many of whose stories are set in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has an extremely rich archaeological landscape, the website of numerous Iron Age brochs as well as a very early middle ages reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's historical survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn created: "These tiny straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we learn more about every square yard of it. We encompass it literally and 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 and also disappearing bunny scuts, a riches of wild flower and small bird life, the soaring hawk, the unforeseen roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the folk that once lived far inland in straths as well as hollows, the past and also today kept in a minute of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a neighborhood museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town institution.