Walking the route first

Text: an original contemporary event-planning-account-style practice extract.

On the map, the procession route was a single blue line. It avoided roadworks, began at the community centre and ended in the park. When I suggested walking it, one organiser tapped the paper and said that the route had already been checked. The line reached its destination. What else was there to discover?

We followed it at four o’clock, the time the procession would begin. A weekly market had filled one corner with stalls that were absent when the map was prepared. People could pass between them, but the wheeled platform carrying the drums could not make the turn without entering the open road. We changed the route one street earlier and rejoined it beyond the market. The alteration added six minutes.

A rehearsal could not freeze the town in place. A delivery van or a temporary barrier might still appear on the day. Nor did walking the route make the map useless; without it, we would not have known where to begin. But the blue line had described distance, not experience. The final plan included a full route walk one week before the event and a shorter check on the morning itself. The procession would still depend on judgement, but it would no longer depend entirely on paper.

In this extract, the writer tries to show the value of testing a plan in the conditions in which it will be used.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.