Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a town in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birthplace of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River etc., most of whose stories are embeded in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a very rich archaeological landscape, the site of numerous Iron Age brochs and also an early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's historical study, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn created: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we get to know every square lawn of it. We include it physically and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout as well as a periodically noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and going away bunny scuts, a wide range of wild flower and also small bird life, the rising hawk, the unforeseen roe, the old graveyard, ideas of the individual that when lived far inland in straths as well as hollows, the past and today held in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is a neighborhood museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town school.