At Rogart station the train does not stop unless you ask it to, following the instructions posted on the platform. It is a request stop on the Far North Line, in the settlement of Pittentrail, with eight parking spaces and a platform reached with some step-free access. Around the station someone has gathered an open-air collection of railway memorabilia, and a few retired carriages stand nearby, put to use as places to sleep.
Pittentrail is the closest Rogart comes to a centre. The rest is a crofting parish spread thinly a few miles inland, about halfway along Strath Fleet between Loch Fleet and Lairg. The A839, the railway and the River Fleet all run together through the strath, and the crofts climb away from them into the hills. The village is four miles from the A9 at The Mound and eleven miles east of Lairg; the 906 bus, run by Macleod's Coaches, links the Post Office with Lairg, Golspie and points beyond on selected journeys, stopping on the main road by the Spar; check the timetable before you travel.
The Pittentrail Inn has been the village pub, a granite building from the 1850s with a public bar, a room for eating and rooms to stay in — worth checking it's still open first. One visitor reported a Sunday roast that came with a spiced gravy, which is not what most people mean by a roast dinner, and is the more interesting for it.
For groceries there is the Rogart Post Office and General Store, along with the Spar, a petrol station and a garage. Through the season the restored Rogart Mart also holds a community market, where past stalls have brought sourdough, honey, cheeses, pies, plants, crafts and weaving.
If you want a walk from the door, the Round Rogart Path is a signed four-and-a-half-mile circuit that begins at the shop and runs through Corry, Rhemusaig and Pittentrail Hill, crossing the River Fleet by the bridge at Dalmore before coming back through Rovie. The Rogart Drove Road is a harder proposition altogether: 13.2 kilometres of mostly pathless heather moor towards Invershin, past a drovers' stance at Monbuie and a broch at Dun-garbh-airigh, following the line by which cattle were once walked south. It needs fitness and proper navigation.
The Mart is the building the community bought and restored. Five local farmers persuaded the firm of Reith and Anderson to set it up in 1936, and in its best years as many as twelve thousand lambs changed hands in a single day. It closed after the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001, was bought by the community in 2018, and reopened on 8 August 2022 as an arts and cultural centre, its doors opened by the then Duke of Rothesay. "It's wonderful to see the Mart back into use in the heart of the community," said the project coordinator, Kate Roach. Music, theatre, exhibitions and markets now use the space, and a permanent local-heritage display sits alongside them.
St Callan's Church stands a little apart, looking out over low, marshy ground ringed by the hills of Little Rogart and Rheidchalmie. It is a harled oblong of 1777, probably designed by James Boag, with a late-nineteenth-century bellcote. Inside are a panelled hexagonal pulpit and sounding board, plain pine pews and stained glass in the east windows. The Christian ground here is much older: it is traced to Callan, a seventh-century missionary, and a local story holds that the site and the glebe boundary were fixed by two white horses drawing a Bible and a heavy stone.
History is not far under the surface. The Battle of Torran Dubh was fought in the strath in 1517, about a mile north-east of the station. Andrew MacDonald was born in Rogart in 1721, fought at Plassey in 1757, was severely wounded and left for dead, recovered to serve in North America including the Quebec campaign, and came home to see out his years here in 1798. For nearly a century the village kept a tweed shop at Bank, where Angus Pirie wove on two looms with a wider blanket loom upstairs, and where his daughter Cathy carried the work on after him.
Towards the coast, Loch Fleet National Nature Reserve has pinewoods, dunes and tidal scenery, with ospreys, harbour seals and otters; the Balblair Wood Trail is mostly wide and flat, with a few gentle, muddy stretches after rain, and ends at a hide with a view over the loch. Golspie lies nine miles east, and Dunrobin Castle a mile beyond it, with eighteen rooms, formal gardens, a museum and a tearoom.
Back at the Mart, the old sale ring and its tiered seating have survived the change of use. The seats that once looked down on a night's worth of lambs now face a stage.