He expected to be sent to the deepest, dankest cave of all the world as a laboratory, and to find it equipped with pedigreed bats, dried unicorn horns and whole rows of alembics that he couldn't use.
He was expecting a dark, deep, and musty lab with archaic equipment.
The D982 leading west from Rouen is the start of the Route des Abbayes, which meanders through woodland and meadows around the medieval Norman abbeys ' most of them enjoying their heyday under William the Conqueror ' at Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville, Jumiyges, Saint-Wandrille, Le Bec-Hellouin, and Caen, culminating in their masterpiece, Mont-Saint-Michel.