Westward Ho!

A photo of a mural in Westward Ho!
Photo by Chris Dymond, (flickr)

Westward Ho! is a village on the sea in Devon, England. Like Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! the exclamation point is, in fact, part of the town’s name.

Westward Ho! was named after the novel Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley. The village was developed starting about ten years after the 1855 publication of the novel.

Since it’s a seaside town, there are some great beaches in Westward Ho! and its neighbouring towns, and, as a bit of extra trivia, Rudyard Kipling lived there for a while