The phrase "a desolate expanse of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a vast, empty, and bleak area, often in a poetic or descriptive context.
Example: "As we drove through the desert, we were struck by the beauty of a desolate expanse of sand and rock stretching as far as the eye could see."
Alternatives: "a barren stretch of" or "an empty landscape of".
It is a desolate expanse of bunkers and hangars surrounded by barbed wire and battered look-out posts.
In his mind's eye, the area was a desolate expanse of cobblestone streets lined with warehouses and other remnants of the city's dying shipping industry.
A promising one, they believe, is the sea.The Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant lies a few hundred metres from the coast; its chimney and two cooling towers dominate a desolate expanse of salt farms.
"Please don't call it our Dien Bien Phu," Lieutenant Colonel Simon Winkworth, of the Royal Engineers, requested as we gazed out onto a desolate expanse of scrub and sand on which he was going to build Camp Bastion.
The Livermore lab in California is one of two national facilities that esign nuclear weapons and detonate them here at the nation's nuclear test site, a desolate expanse of desert bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
Is it all a desolate expanse of gardening programmes and endless shows about how to do up your house or cook a three course meal for four with your hands tied behind your back?
It's a desolate expanse, dotted with boats and huts and a couple of lighthouses, overlooked by Dungeness power station.
The East Bathtub is more than 90percentt completed, a desolate expanse scored with caterpillar treads and boot marks, and reverberating with the incessant whump, whump, whump of gargantuan jackhammers.
Indeed, the Colorado River has not reached the sea since 1998 but ends rather in a cracked and desolate expanse of barren mud flats and abandoned boats — a "dry river cemetery," as Mr. McBride puts it.
It was 350 miles north-west of Umm Qasr, in the middle of Iraq's western desert, a vast and desolate expanse of sand and scree.
Have them create a snaking river of people through the desolate expanse of a Texas dirt farm.
