Corvey sits in a loop of the Weser just outside Höxter, a baroque abbey palace set among meadows with the wooded hills of the Solling and the Weser Uplands closing in around it. The baroque part is handsome but not why people come. Hidden behind it, forming the entrance to the church, is a westwork built between 873 and 885, and it is one of the very few Carolingian buildings in the world still standing more or less as it was built.
The abbey was founded in the ninth century under Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, as a missionary base among the recently conquered Saxons, and it grew into one of the great intellectual centres of the early medieval empire. The westwork, a tall, solid block of stone with an upper chamber, was where the emperor could attend services when he visited. Inside, fragments of wall paintings from that time survive, including scenes from the Odyssey, which is a wonderful surprise in a monastery. Since 2014 Corvey has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Later the abbey library employed August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the poet who wrote the words of the German national anthem; he worked here as librarian in his later years and is buried in the little cemetery by the church.
The Weser Uplands are underrated motorcycle country. The river winds between steep wooded slopes, and the road along it from Höxter towards Holzminden and Bodenwerder is easygoing and scenic, while the roads climbing up into the Solling or out to the west into the Eggegebirge offer proper bends and real elevation changes. Surfaces are generally good. Watch for the little river ferries that still cross the Weser here and there, a charming way to change banks, and for the many cyclists on the Weser cycle route in summer.
Höxter, two kilometres away, is a town of thirty thousand with fuel, supermarkets and a lovely half-timbered centre, so supplies are no problem. Across the river at Fürstenberg, a white castle on a hill houses the porcelain manufactory founded in the eighteenth century, with a museum and café and a fine view down the valley. On a misty autumn morning, with the Weser steaming and rooks in the meadows, Corvey feels very far from the twenty-first century, and very close to the ninth.