Gallery of Jim Blilie's Photos:

World Bicycle Tour, 1990-1992

The Big Show

Part 22:  Ireland

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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Ireland 19-Jun-1992 to 4-Jul-1992, 638 miles

These are photos of our tour through Ireland.  We did not have very good weather in Ireland, it rained

on us most days, even in June and July.

We landed at Dun Loaghaire and headed straight south along the coast of the Irish Sea, through

Wicklow and Wexford, then bending west at Waterford, and then cut across country towards

Limerick via Cashel, Cahir, Clonmel (where my employer produces many of our products).

We went out to the west coast at Lahinch, then north over the Burren and around Galway Bay to

Galway, and then out for a loop around the far west terrain of Connemara.  Then a big cut across

country back to Dublin, the Guinness Brewery (closed the day we hit Dublin!) and then the ferry

back to Holyhead to continue our trip from bottom to top of the UK.

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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.

The sea wall at Dun Laoghaire.  What is that blue sky stuff?	Dun Laoghiare	County Wicklow		The coast in Wicklow
	Ahhhh, Guinness	Bridge at Wexford	Lots of ruined villages	A small ferry over Waterford Harbor (south of the city)
The Dillon Bridge over the River Suir at Carrick-on-Suir, looking towards the Old Bridge More on the Old Bridge And more on the Old Bridge	The same (Carrick-on-Suir), without the bike	Castle Ormande, Carrick-on-Suir	Carrick-on-Suir, Bridge Street	Looking at the mountain Slievenamon, from the south side of the River Suir between Carrick and Kilsheelan.  Thatched bungalows
On  the N24 in Cahir, shortly before the castle.	Me at Cahir Castle, Cahir, County Tipperary, built 1142 And:  Me in the same spot, August 2011	Corssing into County Limerick on the N24		The west coast
Lahinch, near the Cliffs of Moher	Me at the west coast	Camp at Lahinch	More dry stone walls (and no trees)	Typical Irish riding
On the Burren		Neolithic monuments on the Burren		Crossing the Burren
	Galway Bay	Out to Connemara	Heeaavvyy traffic in Connemara	Turf for the fire, Connemara
	Piles of turf, Connemara	Way out in Connemara		Drying turf, Connemara
Getting out of the rain in someone's shed, just outside of the town of Letterfrack, Cty Galway	Always back to the rain ...	The west coast	Jody and April, Americana we met in the west of Ireland	Always back to the rain ...  A pillowcase view in western Ireland
Jeff just loved the rain			Fixing a flat in the rain	Lunch during a break in the rain
Some Seattleites we met at Galway	Me eating a whole apple pie for a snack.  Riding in the rain burns a lot of calories	Back to Dublin		My face, well splattered with mud after our ride into Dublin.
At the source	At the source	Pulling out of Dun Laoghaire on the ferry back to the UK

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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 The Burrin, western Ireland, June 1992

Last updated:  11-Apr-2012