Source A: A view with no visitors

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The notice promised a new perspective on the marsh. By Saturday afternoon, the only people enjoying it were the six volunteers who had built the viewing platform and the three officials trying to explain why it had closed.

The group had called their project the Sky Deck. In photographs, its timber legs rose above the reeds and gave the impression of a structure designed by someone who had met a marsh before. On the day of the opening, visitors were invited to admire the wide view, the clean lines and the volunteers’ determination. The ceremony was postponed when one corner of the deck sank into the soft ground.

This was not, the organiser said, a failure. It was a “minor adjustment to the landscape”. The phrase travelled further than the platform did. While the volunteers pushed at one end, a notice appeared asking the public to keep away from the unstable structure. It was a modest audience for a viewing platform, but a very sensible one.

The project had begun with an ambitious promise: to bring people closer to nature without disturbing it. The council had contributed money for materials and access work. The organiser said the deck would help visitors appreciate the marsh. A local resident, watching the team carry equipment back to the car park, wondered whether the marsh had been asked for its opinion.

Before the first post was driven into the ground, the team had spent evenings drawing plans in the library, choosing timber and arranging the opening ceremony. They measured the width of the deck and the height of its railings. No survey of the soil was commissioned. The organiser said the volunteers had walked across the site after a week without rain and found it “perfectly firm”.

By Monday, the platform remained closed while the council assessed the damage and the cost of making the area safe. The organiser remained cheerful. “We have learnt a great deal,” he said. That may be true. The public, meanwhile, had paid for a view they could not use, and the marsh had received a new structure it had not requested.