A dry run on paper

Original non-fiction-style practice text.

The volunteer team planned its litter survey with a map, a stack of forms and three coloured pens. The organisers wanted every group to cover the same kind of distance. Before assigning the routes, Karim asked one pair to walk their section with an empty bag and complete a practice form.

The map showed a continuous riverside path, but a temporary fence forced them onto a longer road. Their form had no category for several items they found, so the pair recorded the same object in different columns. They also discovered that the pencilled meeting place lay outside the mobile signal area. None of these difficulties had been visible around the office table.

Karim revised the route, clarified the categories and chose a new meeting place. The afternoon's trial produced almost no usable survey figures. It did, however, prevent the following week's larger team from collecting incompatible records along routes they could not complete. Karim kept the practice sheets, with their crossings-out, beside the clean final version.

Explain, using your own words, three problems revealed by the practice walk.