Thank you for the positive feedback and taking the time to reply.
I have started optimising the images and think I may also have to reduce the size of the photos. I cant optimise too much without losing clarity otherwise. I am down to 105k for the index page (apart from the gifs which dont matter too much and the top one has a background image that appears straight away. I have been using the online Dynamic Drive Image Optimiser to get a good idea of the different resolutions. I have saved at the lowest size that is realistic and then in some cases gone back into Photoshop to touch up a few bits and pieces.
Any other suggestions for optimisation tools would be appreciated.
Regards Sue