Invershin

The request stop and the viaduct

Invershin station sits just off the A836 and is a request stop: to board, press the button on the platform Request Stop Kiosk between 20 and 5 minutes before the train is due to arrive. If it has not been pressed at least 5 minutes beforehand, the train will not stop. To get off, tell the conductor in good time. A kilometre away across the water is Culrain, and the two are the closest railway stations in the United Kingdom. You can walk between them by crossing the Shin Viaduct on a footbridge that was added in 2000.

The viaduct is the thing you notice first. Its wrought-iron lattice span and five stone approach arches were built for the Sutherland Railway by Joseph Mitchell and Murdoch Paterson, and it opened to traffic on 13 April 1868. Trains still cross it on the Far North Line. It is variously called the Shin, Oykel or Invershin Viaduct; all three names refer to the same structure over the Kyle of Sutherland.

The village local and the castle view

The Invershin Hotel stands beside the station and the road, making it the practical centre of a place that otherwise strings itself out along the A836. It has a bar with a real fire, a garden, rooms and a bunkhouse, plus live music, and serves real ale. It is unavailable throughout autumn and during the winter or low season. Recent guests mention a cooked breakfast; one recent guest reported an excellent steak. Most rooms look across the Kyle to a wooded height opposite the village.

Carbisdale Castle is a Baronial mansion of 1907, probably by John Robertson of Inverness, with a crenellated octagonal tower and a high square clock tower on a wooded height opposite the village.

Forest trails and a vanished stronghold

For walking, the Falls of Shin lie 2.4 miles off, where salmon leap on their way upriver. Three short waymarked trails start there. The Riverside Trail is a firm-surfaced kilometre through native woodland, home to aspen and the endangered aspen hoverfly. The Pond and Play Trail adds wildlife carvings and forest play areas over 1.3 kilometres. The Woodland Trail climbs through larch, fir and pine for about two kilometres, over ground that turns uneven with moderate slopes, to views across Achany Glen, where you can look and listen for buzzards and woodpeckers. There is a viewpoint, a picnic area, a play area and toilets, making it a strong family half-day from the village.

The village's own castle is harder to find. Invershin Castle survives as an overgrown mound above the Kyle, with a dry ditch on three sides and a single turf-covered scrap of wall; the likeliest reading is a 12th-century motte. The lands here were granted between 1203 and 1214 by Hugh Freskyn to Master Gilbert, archdeacon of Moray and later bishop of Caithness.

Battlefield history and village life

Up the wooded slopes to the north, the Battle of Carbisdale was fought on 27 April 1650. It was the last stand of James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, whose Royalist army was routed by Covenanter forces; he was captured within days and taken to Edinburgh to be tried and executed. One of the hills on the battlefield is Creag a' Choineachan, Lamentation Hill.

Practical things are few and worth knowing. Service 4 links Invershin with Lairg, Bonar Bridge, Ardgay and Tain, with five calls in each direction on weekdays. A mobile library calls every three weeks. The village hall, kept going by a committee registered as a charity, hosts ceilidhs and parties for a settlement scattered along the roadside.

A quiet place among forests and hills

In 2013, a visiting priest set up a fortnightly mission in the village, which had not previously had a visible church presence. Invershin is "a quiet place, surrounded by forests and hills."