Ok, I will have a play with that and see how I go.
I am also using the UltimateListView and loading about 300 items as well in the list and each item in the list has a background image, and another image and a label so times that by 300.. (900 items plus about another 10 or so items on top of that).
I will see what I can do with some of the suggestions you made. most images are small images but I might be able to do some changes to make it smaller and see if it loads quicker.