In the churchyard at Vaynor lies a slab of pink conglomerate, enormous, its bronze letters ending GOD FORGIVE ME. It marks the grave of Robert Thompson Crawshay, the ironmaster, who died in 1879, and it is enclosed by spearheaded cast-iron railings. Cadw lists it for its scale and for an inscription with no obvious parallel.
Vaynor itself is barely a village. It is a scattered hillside settlement above the wooded Taf Fechan gorge, where limestone cliffs, old quarry workings and river pools meet the southern edge of Bannau Brycheiniog. There is no shop here and no pub in the church hamlet. For those you go down to Pontsarn or over to Pontsticill, both within the wider parish.
The Aberglais Inn at Pontsarn is the closest, a renovated nineteenth-century stone hostelry with an oak floor, a log burner and a restaurant looking over the Taf Fechan and the Blue Pool. The menu runs from beer-battered cod and chips to mushroom stroganoff, corned-beef pie and steak-and-Guinness pie. Felinfoel Double Dragon and Dragons Heart are the regular ales, dogs are welcome, and the Taff Trail passes the door.
Pontsticill has two. The Butchers Arms is a grill pub with an eighteen-bed bunkhouse, a few hundred metres from the reservoir and the heritage-railway station; it does deep-fried halloumi, salt-and-pepper squid, a prime-beef smash burger, a mixed grill and Welsh Black slow-cooked beef-and-stout pie, with Grey Trees and Wye Valley Butty Bach on the bar. The Red Cow, stone-built and plainer, keeps a real fire and a Wednesday quiz, and sends out tomato soup, fish and chips, cheeseburger and chips and onion rings. Both take dogs.
The walking is the reason to be here. From Pontsarn an eight-kilometre circuit follows the Cyfarthfa Leat and an old tramway through a limestone gorge of cascades and ancient woodland, out to the Blue Pool and back along the Taff Trail, which crosses the Taf Fechan on an 1864 viaduct. Allow two to three hours; it is mostly level but muddy, narrow in places and edged with steep drops, so proper footwear matters. Dippers and kingfishers work the river. Add a couple of miles from Pontsarn Road and you reach Morlais Castle.
Crawshay paid for the church above his grave. It was designed by G. E. Robinson of Cardiff and built around 1868–70, a hillside building of multi-coloured "crazy paving" stonework braced by heavy downhill buttresses. Newman's Buildings of Wales calls it "a crude performance." George Pace replaced its spire with a gabled cap during a 1987 reroofing, and the glass inside includes a 1934 window by A. L. Wilkinson.
The trouble at Morlais came earlier. Gilbert de Clare built the castle in 1287 and fell into a long dispute with Humphrey de Bohun; de Clare's men were routed at a clash remembered as the Battle of Maesvaynor, and Edward I settled the matter in 1292 with forfeitures and fines. Tradition adds a 1291 battle and a burned church, though the evidence for those is thin.
The Brecon & Merthyr railway closed in 1964. Tony Hills rebuilt the Pant–Pontsticill section almost from nothing and reopened it in 1980 behind a small locomotive called Sybil; the track reached Torpantau by 2014. The heritage trains run from Pant through Pontsticill beside the reservoir, and on a clear day you can see Pen y Fan from the carriage. Pontsticill station has a lakeside café and an adventure playground.
Merthyr Tydfil is the nearest railhead, and the number 25 bus links its station with Pontsticill hourly from Monday to Saturday, with nothing on a Sunday.
Once a year the fields fill for the Vaynor Show at Maes-y-Faenor: livestock classes, a dog show, speed shearing and sheepdog demonstrations, and children's entertainment on a hillside that spends the rest of the year very quiet.