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 etc., a number of whose books are embeded in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a really abundant historical landscape, the website of many Iron Age brochs as well as a very early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's historical study, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn created: "These little straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate appeal. In boyhood we learn more about every square lawn of it. We include it literally as well as 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 as well as vanishing bunny scuts, a riches of wild flower and small bird life, the rising hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the folk that as soon as lived far inland in straths and also hollows, the past as well as today kept in a moment of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town school.