Gallery of Jim Blilie's Photos:

World Bicycle Tour, 1990-1992

The Big Show

Part 23:  United Kingdom, Part 3

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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UK 3:  4-Jul-1992 to 30-Jul-1992, 640 miles

Orkney and Shetland Islands:  30-Jul-1992 to 4-Aug-1992, 46 miles

These photos are from our tour through northern England and Scotland, completing our classic

tour of the UK from Land's End to John O'Groats.

We landed at Holyhead, visited with my Aunt Toni and Uncle Brian at Heswall, near Liverpool,

where they took us on a quick visit to the Lake District.  We then headed more or less straight for

Edinburgh, stopping at the two villages named Mellor in the north of England.  It rained on us every

day in Scotland, for at least part of the day, in July.

We spent a few days in Edinburgh (staying at the most expensive campground we ever used),

then headede up into the Highlands, via Calander, Glen Coe, Fort William (where I made an ascent of

Ben Nevis, highest point in the UK), Loch Ness, Inverness, Halkirk, and John O'Groats, where we

picked up the foot ferry to the Orkney Islands and then the North Sea ferries to the Shetlands and then

over the North Sea to Bergen in Norway.

Well-worn gloves on my hands, the far north of Scotland

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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.

At my Aunt Toni and Uncle Brian's home in Heswall	My Aunt Toni and Uncle Brian, Heswall		Toni and Brian in the Lake District	Toni and Brian in the Lake District
Brian Kelly in the Lake District	The room we got to stay in at Toni and Brian's home in Heswall	Toni and Brian's home	Taking the Ferry 'Cross the Mersey	Jeff in Northern England at the villages called Mellor
Jeff's Cousin Clive Huntley, N. England	Another Mellor village	Yorkshire	Calander	Yorkshire
Yorkshire	Yorkshire	Yorkshire	Me on a dry stone wall, Yorkshire	Carlisle castle
	Approaching Edinburgh	Scottish border	Eskdale	Scottish lowlands
	A Buddhist site in Scotland!	South of Edinburgh	Me on the road	Always back to the rain ...
The most expensive campground we ever used.  Edinburgh	Edinburgh	Edinburgh	Edinburgh	Edinburgh
Edinburgh	Stirling Bridge	Into the Highlands (the rain ...)		Tyndale
Cooking in the rain	Camp			Sunshine in the Highlands!
				Me in the Highlands
Glen Coe	Glen Coe (mind the gap)	Glen Coe	Glen Coe	Glen Coe
Fort William	Camp under Ben Nevis	Hike up Ben Nevis	Summit of Ben Nevis, another (head-in-the-)pillowcase view	Hike down Ben Nevis
Looking down on the campground from the Hike up Ben Nevis trail	Back at camp.  Of course the summit came clear in the afternoon!	Telephoto view of the summit of Ben Nevis	Ben Nevis	To Loch Ness
Heather in bloom		Loch Ness	On the John O'Groats
Camp	Escaping the rain (it's cold!)	Wwaaayyy up north	Some well-worn gloves on my hands	Near John O'Groats
At the lighthouse at John O'Groats	At the very tip	My bike at the John O'Groats post office	Camp	The foot-ferry to the Orkneys
On South Ronaldsay in the Orkneys	Camp at Stromness, Orkneys	Ferry, coming in to Stromness	At Stromness, looking at Hoy	Stromness
Me on the ferry to the Shetlands	Stromness harbor	Ferry to the Shetlands	Ferry to the Shetlands	Shetlands.  Next stop:  Bergen

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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 at John O'Groats, Scotland, Aug 1992

Last updated:  6-Sep-2010