Potato Ridges on a Western Irish Hillside

Potato Ridges on a Western Irish Hillside is an original illustration set in Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland. It lies in mid-latitudes, where the climate is oceanic — mild, wet through the year.

Long raised strips of dark soil run across a coastal hillside, their green potato plants dotted with small white and pale-purple flowers. Narrow wet furrows separate the beds. Faint grassy ridges continue farther uphill past low stone walls and a small whitewashed thatched cottage. Brown peat ground and a rounded bare mountain overlook the grey-blue Atlantic beneath broken rain clouds.

Why is this wet, rocky hillside covered in long parallel ridges?

On shallow, wet ground, hand-built raised beds, known in Ireland as lazy beds, concentrate usable soil around the crop and lift its roots above the wettest layer. The intervening furrows help drain excess water downhill, making cultivation possible where an ordinary flat plot would stay waterlogged. Low evening light reveals both planted beds and older ridges now covered by grass. These cultivation traces, together with peat, stone walls and an exposed Atlantic setting, evoke the traditional potato-growing landscape of western Ireland.

Terpano is a free daily geography puzzle. You study one original illustration, place a pin on a borderless terrain map, and see how close you were. There is no account and no sign-up; progress stays in your own browser. It plays in 11 languages.