The countdown is on to the Falmouth Spring Festival which kicks off in a fortnight and promises to be the best one yet.

Organised by the Falmouth Business Improvement District (BID) and sponsored by the University of Exeter, the festival runs from March 30 to April 17 and invites visitors and residents to celebrate and experience Falmouth’s award-winning green spaces, terrific coastline and open-air venues.

It comes hot on the heels of Falmouth’s success in the GB High Street competition where the town was crowned the UK’s Best Coastal Community, and this year’s event will see more daffodils distributed, more volunteers engaged, more sites spruced up and more ciders on offer than ever before.

Setting the scene will be the much-loved and community-orientated Paint the Town Yellow Day on Thursday, March 30 when around 150 children from primary schools in Falmouth will work alongside student ambassadors from the University of Exeter to hand out 25,000 freshly-picked local daffodils donated by Winchester Growers in Penzance, to businesses and passers-by.

Then the next day and the Saturday, Spring Clean Days will see over 100 volunteers roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, painting, cleaning, planting and landscaping numerous areas around Falmouth. Volunteers will be working with Cormac and Falmouth Town Council, who are once again supporting a range of rejuvenation projects and litter picks include gardening at Greenbank Gardens, a substantial seafront landscaping and planting scheme, beach, coast and town sweeps, and even an underwater litter pick by Atlantic Scuba.

Throughout the festival, guided walks and exhibitions will invite people to discover the area’s cultural, industrial and natural heritage. The walks this year will be complemented by a free rock-pooling session at Gyllyngvase Beach and a Flotsam and Jetsam workshop at Falmouth Art Gallery, both organised by the University of Exeter.

Games and Fitness on The Moor on April 8 will see staff from the recently opened Penryn Campus Sports Centre collaborating with Ships and Castles instructors, to lay on an energetic timetable of free fitness classes, dancing and demonstrations for all the family.

And when you’ve worked up a thirst, the four-day Folk & Cider Fayre on Events Square, will year be laying on a mouth-watering menu of 80 West Country ciders over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, as well as a collection of Cornish artisan craft and food producers, and an enviable musical line-up.

Richard Wilcox, the Falmouth BID manager, said: “Falmouth Spring Festival has a fantastic line-up this year, the biggest yet and we’re delighted to have the University of Exeter sponsoring the event for a second year. I’d also like to thank the huge numbers of volunteers and businesses who have supported as well as organisations including Cormac, Falmouth Town Council, Tempus Leisure, Falmouth Art Gallery, Falmouth Bay Residents Association and the Falmouth District Hotels Association.”

Ruth Grimmer, from the University of Exeter, added: “We are delighted to be sponsoring the Falmouth Spring Festival again this year. It gives us the opportunity to celebrate the start of spring with the rest of the community, and for our students and staff to participate in the town’s activities, especially the spring clean, which always generates a crowd of willing volunteers.”