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 and so on, a lot of whose books are embeded in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has a very abundant archaeological landscape, the site of many Iron Age brochs and also a very early middle ages reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's historical survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn composed: "These tiny straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate elegance. In boyhood we are familiar with every square lawn of it. We incorporate it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout as well as an occasionally noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and disappearing rabbit scuts, a riches of wild blossom and small bird life, the rising hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the people that when lived far inland in straths and also hollows, the past and the present kept in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Bit Of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape analysis centre at the old village school.