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, a number of whose books are set in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has a very rich archaeological landscape, the website of various Iron Age brochs and a very early middle ages reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn composed: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate elegance. In boyhood we learn more about every square yard of it. We incorporate it literally and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout as well as a sometimes visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and vanishing rabbit scuts, a wealth of wild flower and small bird life, the skyrocketing hawk, the unforeseen roe, the old graveyard, ideas of the individual that once lived much inland in straths as well as hollows, the past as well as the present kept in a minute of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village institution.