The wide gap between the two tracks at Garve station was left there on purpose. When the line was built, someone proposed hauling fishing vessels overland by rail, and the platforms were set far enough apart to let them through. The boats never came. Neither did the branch line to Ullapool, for which Garve was meant to be the junction. What did arrive was the train itself, on 19 August 1870, on the Dingwall and Skye Railway, and it still stops here — two platforms, a waiting room, ten free car spaces and six cycle stands, but no staff, no ticket machine, no toilets and no refreshments. A lattice-girder footbridge cast in 1908 by the Rose Street Foundry crosses the line beside a two-storey station house and a wooden shelter.
The railway and the A835 run together through the strath, past Loch Garve and the Black Water, with scattered farms, rough grazing and broadleaved woodland on either side. Ben Wyvis stands to the north and sets the terms for everything here: this is a place people pass through on the way west to Ullapool and the coast.
Do not arrive expecting to shop. There is a Post Office — mail, everyday banking, bill payments — but little else in the way of shops, and the takeaway that once stood by the public hall has gone. For food, the forestry service sends visitors on towards Contin, Strathpeffer and Dingwall. Closer to hand, at Inchbae a few miles up the road, a former hunting lodge on the Black Water now takes guests as a B&B, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, welcomes pets and gives them free fishing on the river. Its full Scottish breakfast is the thing to order.
Walking is a major reason to visit. Two miles north, signed off the A835, the Two Bridges Trail makes a two-mile circuit along the Black Water between two old crossings, past peaty pools and rapids, over uneven steps and rough rocky ground, in about an hour and a half. One of the bridges is Little Garve Bridge, a twin-arched stone span built around 1762 for Major William Caulfeild's military road from Contin to Poolewe — part of the network the government threw across the Highlands to control them. The other is Silver Bridge, on an old drove road where cattle were once shod for the journey. Forestry and Land Scotland describes the route as "walking in the footsteps of soldiers – and cows!" Where the paths meet the river there is the Wyvis Natural Playpark, with a play area, a viewpoint and a picnic spot.
Ben Wyvis itself is a longer, more serious day: nearly nine miles and 935 metres of ascent from a car park north of the village, four and a half to five and a half hours through aspen, birch and rowan before the exposed plateau to the 1,046-metre summit. There is no bus to the start. Buses do run along the A835 and A832, towards Dingwall and Inverness one way and Ullapool, Gairloch and Lochcarron the other.
Garve's own church is now someone's house — a red-sandstone Victorian kirk between the railway and the road, deconsecrated and sold, its bell tower kept and a long view to Ben Wyvis from the door. The one working church in the district is at Kinlochluichart, a plain Parliamentary church of 1827 whose graveyard holds a heavy table monument to Louisa, Lady Ashburton.
If you have children and a spare afternoon, Rogie Falls is a short run towards Contin, where in autumn the salmon fling themselves up the water below a suspension bridge, and the Highland Museum of Childhood at Strathpeffer fills an old station with dolls, toys, prams and old schoolbooks.
Back at Garve, the shelter and its bench wait for the next train west.