Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a town in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birth place of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, a number of whose stories are embeded in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has an extremely abundant historical landscape, the site of numerous Iron Age brochs as well as a very early medieval reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's historical study, "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 are familiar with every square yard of it. We include it literally and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming 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 blossom and also small bird life, the rising hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the people who as soon as 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 a community museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village institution.