aha - i noticed the link afterwards!! The reason they are taking so long is because you are actually loading the full size picture but displaying it small. Notice how as soon as you click the thumbnail the main picture loads instantly!
You need to create seperate smaller thumbnail images that link to the page with the full size image on it.
I might as well display the full photos and do away with the thumbnails if it’s going to take that much time. I don’t fancy making smaller copies of all the photos, well especially manually. I shall have a play with Photoshop and see if I can fashion something that I can upload to angelfire.
Photoshop will make your entire website for you if you want it to. Including automatically resizing all pictures from original size down to large web size and thumbnail. I've done a couple with this feature, it takes about 30 seconds and looks like you've worked dead hard!