Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village 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 books are embeded in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a very abundant archaeological landscape, the website of numerous Iron Age brochs and also a very early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn created: "These little straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate elegance. In boyhood we are familiar with every square yard of it. We encompass it literally and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout as well as an occasionally visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and also going away bunny scuts, a wide range of wild blossom and also tiny bird life, the soaring hawk, the unforeseen roe, the old graveyard, ideas of the folk that when lived much inland in straths and hollows, the past and the present kept in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is an area museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village college.
