April 19^th, 2011, VANCOUVER, B.C. – ASHBURTON VENTURES INC. (ABR-TSX:V) (ARB-FRANKFURT)  (“Ashburton” or the "Company”) is pleased to announce that the drilling program has commenced at its Deep Creek Project, located 112 kilometres north of Elko, Nevada. Rocky Peak Drilling (Twin Falls, Idaho) has been engaged to drill up to sixteen core holes for a total of 2,900 meters (9,600 ft.). The objectives of the program are to locate additional zones of gold mineralization southward along the Range Front Structure, and to test the extent of high grade gold veins in the Upper Vein and Waterfall Vein areas.

The 2011 work program at Deep Creek began several weeks ago, and in spite of late heavy snows the road and drill pad construction is nearly complete. The remaining construction will be undertaken while drilling begins at lower elevations along the Range Front Structure, where zones of potentially greater hydrothermal alteration have been identified through structure cell mapping (see news release, March 3, 2011). As weather improves, drilling will move to the Upper Vein and Waterfall Vein Areas, to test for extension of the known veins at depth and under Tertiary volcanics to the southeast, and for additional veins not seen at surface but suggested to exist by the presence of gold-bearing float above the known veins. With over 640 meters of strike length, only 200 meters of the Upper Vein has been sampled continuously on surface, with 35 meters of length consistently over 10 g/t of gold to date. Sampling is still early stage at the recently discovered Waterfall Vein, with a length of 200 meters but only three samples collected to date, with two assaying at 25.5 and 20.5 g/t Au. The ‘Thirteen-Five’ vein located 60 meters west of the Waterfall Vein is of undetermined length has only one assay of 13.5 g/t Au collected to date (see news release, January 18, 2011).

Drilling will be accomplished through the use of an EF-50 skid mounted drill, operating two, twelve (12-hour) shifts per day. To expedite assay results, core logging and splitting will be undertaken on-site, with sample splits delivered to the ALS-Chemex Laboratories in Elko, Nevada. The drilling campaign is anticipated to take 60-90 days to complete.

Exploration on the property is also ramping up as the snow recedes, with a primary focus on an area north-northeast of the present drilling program, where historical soil and rock assays returned values up to 1.71 ppm Au and 4.66 ppm Au, respectively.

The technical contents of this release were approved by Dr. Tom McCandless, P.Geo., Vice President, Exploration for Ashburton and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

Ashburton Ventures is a junior exploration company actively seeking mineral opportunities for the benefit of all its stakeholders. More information on the Deep Creek project can be found at www.ashburtonventures.com .

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Michael England, President

For further information contact:

Telephone: (604) 683-3995