How many days until spring?

Spring starts at the March equinox, usually on the 20th, the point where day and night are close to equal length and the balance tips towards longer days. From then until June the daylight in Britain gains around four minutes a day, which is fast enough to notice week by week.

The clocks go forward an hour on the last Sunday of March, moving the country onto British Summer Time and shifting an hour of daylight into the evening overnight. That single change probably marks the arrival of spring more strongly in daily life than the equinox does — it is the weekend when people start eating outside, and the one where everybody loses an hour of sleep.

What follows is the most photographed stretch of the British year: daffodils along verges, blossom in city streets, bluebell woods at the end of April, lambing across the uplands, and the first cricket. Two bank holidays land in May, Easter falls somewhere in the window, and the gardening year begins in earnest.

The Met Office's meteorological spring starts on 1 March, three weeks earlier, so different sources give different answers. This countdown uses the astronomical equinox and runs to midnight at the start of that date.