Gallery of Jim Blilie's Photos:

World Bicycle Tour, 1990-1992

The Big Show

Part 19:  Spain

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning

all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas

and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts

of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues

from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance

which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can,

begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."  (Often attributed to Goethe)

  This page is under construction.  I'm still working on a text for each segment of the

trip and scanning in some negatives and maybe a few more slides hidden here and there.

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These are THE BIG SHOW of my slides from my trip around the world with Jeff Mellor, 1990-1992.

There are many more slides in this set than on the main world tour page:  About 2600 total.  I spent

some time in late 2009 going through all my slides from the world trip and I selected many for scanning.

The results are on this page (slide shows).  Many of these have been seen only by me and many of those

I hadn't seen since 1993.  The trip itself is outlined below.

These are scans of my Kodachrome 64 (and a very small number of Ektachrome 100) slides

From Jim and Jeff Mellor's bicycle tour around the world from Nov-1990 through Oct-1992

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010 All rights reserved

I used a very nice, yet inexpensive scanner, the  Epson V500  I like it very much.

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Spain:  30-Mar-1992 to 16-Apr-1992, 452 miles

It was cold in Spain.  It never went above 10°C (50°F) the entire 2-1/2 weeks we spent in Spain.

We were listening to Chris Isaak sing about that "Big Blue Spanish Sky" and it sounded pretty

ironic to us!

We entered at Guarda, Portugal in the 40°F windy rain storm and barely made it to a little road house

before Jeff got hypothermic.  We spent many night in hotels and pensions in Spain because we were

almost always cold and wet.

We went through Cuidad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Avila from which we took a train ride into Madrid for

a day, Segovia, Burgos, Vittoria Bilbao, Durango, and then along the Atlantic coast to France at Biarritz.

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For the slide show:  

Click HERE.  Then:

Click on the first picture (upper left picture) on the black photo album page and then

Click the "play" button at the upper right of the view panel to start the slide show.

Enjoy.

Cold, wet, blustery day we entered Spain	Approaching Cuidad Rodrigo	Cuidad Rodrigo	Cuidad Rodrigo, the city walls	Cuidad Rodrigo
Cuidad Rodrigo			The plains of Castile (where the rain mainly falls)
Jeff in "Spain Wear":  That is everything you've got!	At Avila		We took the train into Madrid from Avila.  The Prado, on of my very favorite museums	Madrid
The Plaza de Toros at Madrid
	Pension at Avila	Me on the road, with snowy mountains behind	Jeff on the road	Snowy mountains
Segovia	Roman aqueduct at Segovia	Segovia	Segovia
		Jeff, on the road, Castile y Leon		One of our few camps.  Completely deserted campground.
Plains of Spain	Burgos with a stork in flight		The snow on the Cordillera Cantabrica	Crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica
Crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica	Me on the way	Crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica, Camp	Crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica	Crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica
Crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica	Me, crossing the Cordillera Cantabrica		Trying to warm up
Durango	Descending to the Atlantic (notice the wet road)	Back to the Atlantic at last	Back to the Atlantic at last	Back to the Atlantic at last

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Outline of our trip:

From Nov. 15, 1990 to Oct. 6, 1992, with a five-month break for the winter of '91-'92, Jeff Mellor

and I traveled around the world through 26 countries, mostly by bicycle.  While in the "developed"

world, we bicycled 1000 miles per month, camping each night.  In Asia and Africa, we traveled by

train and bus and used guest-houses.  We encountered 16 different foreign languages, of which we

needed to learn at least the rudiments.  We rode a total of almost 11,000 miles on our bikes, camped out

at least 350 times, and climbed several mountains including Pt. Lenana (16,350 ft.) on Mt. Kenya in

Africa.  We took a three-week, 220-mile hike around the Annapurna Range in Nepal, which included

a 17,700 ft. high pass.  I took 13,000 photographs and wrote 1000 pages of journals.  No experience

in my life, except my university education, can compare with these travels for the depth and breadth

of learning or for the perspective gained.  It was one of the peak life experiences, up there with

marriage, children, university education.

Our trip was through these countries:

[Hawaii:  The Big Island, a 2-week shake-down within the US, started Nov 1990]

Fiji, about 10 days riding around Viti Levu from Nadi to Suva

New Zealand:  Auckland to Wellington via Coromandel Penn. and a loop around the Southern

Alps from Christchurch and back

Australia, from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra and Mt. Kosciusko, around Tasmania, bits and

pieces inland mostly bus to Darwin

Singapore

Malaysia, from Singapore to the Thai border

Thailand (no bikes; we sent our bikes to Denmark from Bangkok, not wanting to ride in Thailand,

Nepal, India, Kenya, or Egypt)

Nepal (no bikes)

India (no bikes; just passed through Delhi and Bombay since we were running way behind)

and then on to a long tour of Europe:

Denmark

Germany

Netherlands

Belgium

France

United Kingdom

Then a winter's break at home in the USA from Oct 1991 through March 1992, then we flew

back to Lisbon Portugal in March 1992:

Portugal

Spain

France

UK, we rode from Plymouth to Land's End then from Land's End to John O'Groats at the tip of

Scotland and via ferries to the Orkneys, Shetlands, and on to Norway over the North Sea (with a

detour from Holyhead in Wales over to Ireland and back)

Ireland

Norway

Sweden

Germany (former East Germany)

Poland

Czech Republic

Austria

Germany (Bavaria) and home in Oct 1992 from Frankfurt am Main

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

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Time and mileage table:

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Background image is my bike in front of Avila, Spain, April 1992

Last updated:  5-Sep-2010