Dunbeath

Gunn, the Harbour and the Bay

A bronze boy wrestles a salmon at the harbour, put there in 1991 for the centenary of Neil Gunn's birth. Gunn was born beside the village shop in 1891, and the fish is Kenn's, the salmon a boy hauls from the river in Highland River, the novel rooted in Dunbeath Water and the strath behind the village. He also wrote The Silver Darlings, the silver darlings being herring, set in the years of the herring boom when boats worked this coast.

The village sits at the mouth of Dunbeath Water on the east Caithness coast, where a wooded strath opens into a harbour and bay on the North Sea. The A9, and the NC500 with it, runs straight through. On that road above the bay is The Bay Dunbeath, which now also trades as Dunbeath Coastal Retreat and was, in earlier lives, The Bay Owl and before that the Inver Arms. It does wood-fired pizza, burgers and fish and chips. The beer garden looks over the bay to the castle, and dogs are welcome.

Provisions and the Wooded Strath

The post office and general store on Campbell Avenue handles parcels, returns and current-account banking, and there is a SPAR for the rest. For something beyond provisions, the River Bothy at Berriedale, a short run south, is a tearoom and deli selling local jams and chutneys, smoked salmon, venison, Scottish cheeses, free-range Halkirk eggs, Caithness chocolate and wildflower honey. The Laidhay Tea Room sits just north.

The best of Dunbeath is the strath. The heritage trail begins at Thomas Telford's 1812 bridge and the old meal mill, which ground until 1950 and was last run by Adam Cunningham, who came back to work it after losing an arm with the Seaforth Highlanders in the First World War. From the mill the path follows Dunbeath Water through hazel, birch, rowan and bird-cherry, with dippers on the stones and buzzards overhead and roe deer in the trees. It is a mile there and back to the broch, three to Prisoner's Leap.

Broch Legend and Castle History

Dun Beath broch stands on a triangular spur where the water meets Houstry Burn. It may be the only broch named in a contemporary document: the Annals of Ulster record a siege of Dun Beata in AD 680. Prisoner's Leap is a gorge a captive is said to have cleared to win his release, a feat local tradition explains by his having been an orphan raised on hind's milk.

South of the village, Dunbeath Castle crowns a cliff-top promontory. It is category A listed, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and was the seat of the Sinclairs of Dunbeath; General Hurry took and garrisoned it for Montrose in 1650, though the building came through intact. It is a private house and the walled gardens open by appointment only, so you take it in from the coast rather than the gate.

Museum, Recreation and Croft

The Heritage Museum fills the old school and covers the archaeology, the people and Gunn himself. Dunbeath Hall has a playpark, football pitch and tennis court. Half a mile north, Laidhay Croft Museum's longhouse and barn were worked as a croft until 1968, the barn framed partly with old fishing-boat timbers and currently under restoration after a roof collapse.

The Journey and the Intimate Strath

The nearest railway is at Helmsdale, fifteen miles south on the A9; the Stagecoach X99 stops at the war memorial on its way between Inverness and Thurso. Gunn, who knew the place as well as anyone, called it plainly: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty."