Covid memories: Giving birth alone, pavement pubs and hugs outside funerals

For some, lockdown was a time of baking banana bread, rekindling relationships with family and getting fit.

For others, it was a time of unbearable hardship. People had to attend hospital treatments alone, go months without seeing some of their closest friends and relatives, and say their final farewells to loved ones over video call - in some cases without being able to attend their funerals.

Hundreds of people contacted us to share their memories of lockdown in response to the BBC's coverage of the Covid day of reflection, charting the high and lows they experienced after the UK entered lockdown on 23 March 2020.

These memories – of new hobbies and relationships, of motherhood and family, of loneliness, of interrupted treatments, of joy and grief – offer a snapshot of what people across the UK went through five years ago.

With many people cut off from their close friends and relatives, lockdown encouraged people to get closer to their neighbours.

Nik Barratt, 56, from Leicester, and his neighbours sat on their driveways to enjoy a beer every Saturday afternoon for 65 consecutive weeks, sometimes with umbrellas or torches.

Other people walking past would say hello, and Nik says that the sense of community is still strong five years later.

Meanwhile, over in Reading people decorated a street with banners, drawings and chalked messages on pavements to celebrate the fourth birthday of their neighbour Felix in May 2020.

"We have no family in the country, so it was really lovely to have that community around us," his mother Julie Ricau says.

People had to make a quick decision about who to go into lockdown with. One woman, who did not want to be named, says she went into lockdown with someone she had been dating for just a few months - and, five years later, they are now living in the Lake District with two children.

Many people told the BBC they were grateful to be able to work from home or otherwise avoid the hubbub of daily life, and instead spend more time with their families, in some cases with their adult children returning home.

Rachel Newton-Carroll, 51, Sheffield, formed a bubble with her parents, who lived a short drive away. She was able to spend more time with her father, who had prostate cancer, visiting National Trust properties and going for short walks.

"Most people went through horrendous things during Covid," she says. "So the fact that I can turn around and almost say it was a blessing sounds really awful. And I do feel guilty for that sometimes."

Others relished their time alone during lockdown. People told the BBC they made sourdough, started exercising, wrote books and took the time to appreciate nature. They reminisced about quiet city centres and skies clear of contrails.

Eva Charrington, 59, from Tonbridge, Kent, took up watercolour painting.

Speaking about her new-found hobby, she said: "I was in a completely different world and I just completely forgot all the chaos and stress that was going around.

"I don't do so much now because life is just so busy in a sense. I miss those times when I couldn't do anything else other than that in the morning."

But for people whose loved ones passed away during the pandemic, lockdown made it difficult to grieve. People were not always able to say goodbye properly, attendance at funerals was strictly limited, and people could not be comforted by friends and family as they mourned.

Sue Stollery's husband Terry died just 10 days before the UK entered lockdown. Sue, 64, North Wales, says she was only able to invite nine other guests to his cremation.

They had to sit apart during the ceremony, but when they went outside afterwards, "we did all hug, even though we weren't supposed to," she says.

Jo Linney, 66, from east Hertfordshire, says she will "always feel guilty" for not being able to visit her daughter Sarah in hospital in the final days leading up to her death in April 2021. She had been hospitalised following a stroke earlier that year and only Sarah's husband was able to visit her during the final days of her life.

Jo's process of grieving was complicated by lockdown. Her husband had died in 2018 and she lived alone during the pandemic.

"I think the most difficult thing was dealing with all of this at home on my own," she says. "There was nobody to give me a cuddle. When you have to make the phone calls telling relatives that she's died, there wasn't anybody's shoulder to cry on when I'd made the calls except two labrador dogs."

For people who were ill during lockdown, their treatment had to continue, but it had to be adapted to social distancing. Some people had to go to hospital alone or get their treatment at home instead. Support groups switched to online and some treatments were delayed as the pandemic put huge strain on the NHS.

Steve Priest, from Manchester, and his partner were both diagnosed with cancer at the start of lockdown and moved in together so that they could take turns looking after each other.

"We were trapped and there was nobody, there was no support network and it made it 10-times worse," he says.

"You had people moaning about toilet rolls," he remembers. "Are you for real?"

Sarah Wood, 48, from Derby, had been diagnosed with breast cancer less than a week before the UK went into lockdown and quickly went into strict isolation with her husband, daughter and mother in their half-finished self-built home.

"Our dream home became my hospital," Sarah says. Her private healthcare provider told her it was too dangerous for her to come to hospital for chemotherapy so she had at-home treatment instead, though she worried that the nurse could unknowingly spread the virus.

People working on the frontline during the pandemic reached out to the BBC to share their experiences as medical staff, postal workers and supermarket employees. Some said they were grateful for the Thursday night clap for the NHS, while others said they felt underappreciated.

Fiona Thompson, from Bournemouth, had already taken an early retirement from her work as a hospital pharmacist just a few months before the pandemic hit. But Fiona, then in her late 50s, says she knew she had to help, so she came back from retirement.

What shocked her was the "sheer number" of deaths. She says that because of social distancing, "you suddenly become aware that there are patients that have been on the ward who have unfortunately passed away and they've only ever been a name to you, they've never been a face".

Fiona has memories of trying to fix broken face masks, getting sore ears from where the straps rubbed, and taking Covid tests every morning. She witnessed junior doctors giving relatives a "very poor prognosis for their loved ones" over the phone. "They were just tired and it was breaking their hearts."

Some of her relatives discouraged her from returning to work because of the risk of getting Covid, and Fiona says that she did feel guilty after both she and her husband got the virus in early 2021. But ultimately, she made the right decision by returning to work, she says. "Whilst you can only ever be one person, at least you are one extra person."

Women say the pandemic massively shaped their experiences of pregnancy and new motherhood, having to attend pre-natal and post-natal appointments alone, giving birth without anyone they knew by their side, and getting used to being a parent while cut off from conventional support systems.

Laura Reed, 43, from Basingstoke, had a planned caesarean section in April 2020. Her husband dropped her off with a suitcase and returned the next day to pick her up.

Speaking on being alone, she says: "I was shaking a lot. I was really scared and nervous." A nurse took the first photos of her and her son together.

Laura Phipps' baby was born two months before the UK went into lockdown. She described lockdown as "probably the loneliest time of my life".

"You were just sitting spending most of your time on your own," says Laura, 38, from Cambridge.

"They say it takes a village to raise a child, but there was no village in Covid."

Laura says it was sad that her relatives could not see her baby's first milestones.

"The first smile, the first words, the first steps, no one saw that stuff," she says. "It just happened in our house."