Celebrations

More than 450 students entered the recent competition to find a winning logo for Berkhamsted Games 2012, so Ashlyns School was very proud to learn that eight of its students were shortlisted by the judges. In the final decision, Amy Proudfoot’s design won third place, while designs by our other Year 9 finalists earned awards of Commended and Highly Commended.

Last Wednesday, 21 March 2012, Ashlyns students were invited to meet with the town's most recent restaurateur Raymond Blanc, the self taught Michelin starred gourmet himself. He popped into the Swan Youth Centre as part of a week of activities within the Berkhamsted community and met with Ashlyns students both present and a few familiar faces from recent years. Raymond gave a very impassioned snapshot of his own teenage years, failed career moves etc, before moving on to talk about his true loves - food and serving it properly! The students got a real flavour of his sense of family, community and genuine interest in training young people (Raymond has trained 27 Michelin starred British chefs - a quarter of all those having received the accolade in Britain). Students were then invited to ask questions to which he offered some candid replies.

All in all a very interesting visit and I got a chance to arrange a further meeting in November that I'm hoping might include some cooking and more importantly some tasting. Which brings me on to the highlight of the afternoon. Just as the discussion finished Jordan Flint, whose chocolate brownies are now known by the Ashlyns community as being 'legendary', presented Monsieur Blanc some of his finest offerings to which he asked "Do you want me to be honest?", Jordan replied "....well, yeah", to which Raymond replied "....they are delicious!". Wonderful moment!

Mark Nicholson, Head of Technology

View the video

Only twelve weeks to go; the excitement is building! 

The flight details are as follows:  

Monday 2 April dep 15.05       flight BA115    London Heathrow to JFK        arr 17.40
Monday 9 April dep 22.35       flight BA182    JFK to London Heathrow        arr 10.30 (10.4.12)

Accommodation details:

Monday 2 April            Inn of the Six Mountains Killington     6 nights half board
Sunday 8 April             Park South Hotel New York               1 night half board

Please open the Powerpoint presentation which Miss Crosland presented at the recent Parents’ Evening.