Coming out of Bayreuth we had planned a route with Google Maps, back home. But once on the scene, we saw that there are numerous signed radwegs all around, and as much as possible we switched to them. Still there was a lot of on road bits to the section, and rough portions of path. The radwegs could not take us everywhere we wanted to go, so Google came back into play. However it seemed to favour even bigger roads, so we also ended up doing some pure GPS noodling around. That means this was not a simple dawdle down a known path, leading to stress and sometimes to getting lost.

Nurnberg, which could have been the big plus for this section was ok, but did not live up to its advance billing. Everything in this region is pretty darn nice, so being a little down on Nurnberg is just by comparison to other nearby places, not in absolute terms.

The hop over to Heilsbronn, again was fun, and the town is nice but not really a tourist destination. We got a big kick out of Ortlieb, though you would have to be a touring bag fanatic to want to follow our footsteps on that.

Ortlieb Ausflug Pros

Some helpful radwegs along the way
Most roads had cycle paths beside or near
Beautiful forest section south of Horlach
The actual Ortlieb factory and warm welcome there

Ortlieb Ausflug Cons

Hilly in spots
On road sections
Scenery nice but not spectacular
Confusing multiplicity of radwegs