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., a number of whose stories are set in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a very abundant historical landscape, the website of numerous Iron Age brochs as well as an early middle ages monastic 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 appeal. In boyhood we get to know every square backyard of it. We encompass it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout as well as a sometimes noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and also vanishing bunny scuts, a wealth of wild blossom as well as little bird life, the soaring hawk, the unforeseen roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the individual that once lived far inland in straths as well as hollows, the past as well as the here and now held in a moment of day-dream." ('My Little Bit Of Britain', 1941.). There is an area museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old town school.