Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a town 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 etc., many of whose stories are embeded in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has a really rich historical landscape, the website of various Iron Age brochs and also an early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's historical survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn composed: "These tiny straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we are familiar with every square lawn of it. We include it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and an occasionally noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken as well as disappearing bunny scuts, a wide range of wild blossom and tiny bird life, the skyrocketing hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the individual who once lived much inland in straths and hollows, the past and also today held in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is an area museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village institution.