Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village 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 and so on, many of whose novels are set in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has an extremely abundant archaeological landscape, the site of various Iron Age brochs and also a very early medieval monastic site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn created: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty. In boyhood we learn more about every square lawn of it. We include it physically and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout and also an occasionally noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and also going away rabbit scuts, a wide range of wild flower and also little bird life, the skyrocketing hawk, the unforeseen roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the folk that as soon as lived much inland in straths and also hollows, the past and also today kept in a minute of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town school.