The wildfires that regularly ravage much of southern California were what convinced Bill Hillyard and his wife Anne to move to west Cork in 2020.
“One day we were out in our garden and it was snowing ash. It was coming down like snow. Anne turned to me and said, we need to move somewhere where it rains,” Hillyard says.
In their spacious back garden in California, the couple grew oranges, lemons, avocados, pineapples, six varieties of grapes, apples, peaches, apricots and plums.
“In the last few years that we were there, all the European fruit died as it wasn’t getting cold anymore. That was climate change in your face.”
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Though his family were from California, Hillyard grew up in Mississippi as his father worked for Nasa.
“There’s a secret Nasa base in the swamps of Mississippi. Most people have no idea it’s there and he was there doing something nefarious, I’m sure.”
Hillyard grew up in a family that relished their Irish identity. His mother’s parents had both emigrated from Ireland, his grandmother from Kerry and grandfather from Roscommon.
“My grandmother stayed with us much of the time. She had all of those kind of Irish-isms and superstitions that you would get from that part of Ireland in the 1920s when she left. She travelled back to Ireland frequently.”
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Hillyard’s father was English, and he says his mother was terrified to tell her parents that they had got married. She didn’t tell her parents they were married for two years.
“I was told that I was Irish. I was raised to be Irish. My dad was held accountable for 800 years of occupation of Ireland all my life.”
When Hillyard was 17, his family moved back to California.
“It was like moving five years into the future. The styles were different, the fashion was different, the way people spoke was different. It took me a while to get adjusted to that.”
In San Diego, Hillyard got very into surfing and thereafter moved to Hawaii to pursue that pastime. Aged 20, he spent a year sailing around the South Pacific and lived in Australia for a while before moving back to San Diego in 1988. Hillyard met Anne a month after he returned to San Diego, in an Irish-Mexican bar, and they’ve been together ever since.
Hillyard has spent most of his career managing restaurants while Anne pursued a career as an environmental scientist. In his 40s he fulfilled a lifelong dream and went back to college to get a degree in literary journalism. In 2018, he published a book about the true story of a community of misfits who lived in the Californian desert in the 1960s called Welcome To Wonder Valley.
Baltimore really looked after us. They had these two Yanks show up and they were all very nice
— Bill Hillyard
Politics, and more specifically Donald Trump being elected US president for the first time in 2016, also played a role in the couple’s decision to move to Ireland.
“Politics wasn’t suiting us any longer. We didn’t feel at home in our own country.”
Hillyard and Anne visited west Cork in the August 2017 while on holiday with his parents.
“We were driving though Glandore and it was just the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. We looked at each other and said, okay this is it. We’re coming to west Cork.”
Over the next few years, the couple regularly returned to west Cork to look at different pubs to buy. Though they were in a financial position to retire they wanted to start to open a pub that served good food as they are both passionate about it. They were also worried about having nothing to do, and that they wouldn’t meet people in their new home otherwise.
At the beginning of 2020 they purchased The Algiers pub in Baltimore, which was going to need quite a lot of work.
“Back in America we lived in the oldest house in our town, it was built in 1964. We had no idea what we were taking on when we moved into something that was 210 years old.”
Hillyard jokes that the couple were blessed by a global pandemic. When Ireland entered lockdown, they had friends from California visiting who ended up being unable to get back home for months.
“They were here for nine months and completely transformed The Algiers. We couldn’t get the building materials so [our friends] had to repurpose everything.”
The couple became friends with the owner of their local plumbing shop. Their electrician would leave things outside the house and then get Hillyard, Anne and their friends to leave the house so he could check on what they had done. The people who owned the local paint shop in Skibbereen would leave paint at an agreed location on the side of the road for them to pick up and take home.
“It really was a good time. Baltimore really looked after us. They had these two Yanks show up and they were all very nice.”
Some work they left up to specialists – a conservationist joiner restored the front façade of the pub.
Managing The Algiers has been mostly smooth sailing, though Hillyard admits he once had an employee call him the rudest man she’d ever met because of his direct American manner. He has since reflected and changed his management style somewhat.
Hillyard feels that the time, work and money that he and Anne have poured into The Algiers signalled to the locals that the couple was there to stay.
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
