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), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, many of whose books are set in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has a really abundant historical landscape, the site of various Iron Age brochs and an early medieval reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's historical survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote: "These little straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate elegance. In boyhood we learn more about every square yard of it. We incorporate it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and a sometimes noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken as well as going away rabbit scuts, a riches of wild blossom as well as tiny bird life, the rising hawk, the unanticipated roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the people who when lived much inland in straths as well as hollows, the past as well as the here and now held in a minute of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape analysis centre at the old village school.