At the stroke of midnight hour on Sunday as (parts of) the world slept, England awoke to life and freedom and young people crashed into night clubs across the country to dance away 16 months of frustration.

With apologies to Nehru’s “Tryst of Destiny” speech from 1947, that’s a reasonable summation of what happened as all lockdown restrictions were removed in England.

BBC Radio 4’s World at One bulletin at 1pm on Monday described the crazy scenes as “the first day of life without limits”.

There may be a price to pay later for such abandon but the night clubs counted down the minutes to the midnight hour. Huge queues were seen outside night clubs across the country, especially in London, Brighton, Newcastle and Dorset. Thousands of enthusiastic revellers piled onto dance floors for first time since March 2020.

Tristan Moffat, operations director of London’s The Piano Works, said it was “the moment we’ve been waiting for, that our customers have been waiting for”. The business had been keen to open its doors after losing about £40,000 a month.

In Leeds, Bar Fibre patron Lorna Feeney, 44, said: “I’m absolutely ecstatic. That’s my life, my soul — I love dancing. It bonds me, it’s amazing, it makes me feel so good. It’s about listening to the music and really feeling it, having a dance and not having to worry about anything that’s going on — not sitting on your chair and getting fat.”

Crucially people were allowed to party without being required to provide Covid passports or negative test results.

Face masks are also no longer legally required, and with social distancing rules shelved, there are no limits on numbers attending at most venues. Venues including Fabric, E1, Ministry of Sound and Egg nightclubs in London, Pryzm in Brighton, Powerhouse Night Club in Newcastle and Moon Acre in Dorset re-opened on the stroke of midnight — the very second legal restrictions on social contact were removed.

Fundraiser Chloe Waite, 37, first in the queue outside Egg nightclub in London, explained: “For me this is something we’re going to remember for a long, long time and we might not get the opportunity for a while.”

Gabriel Wildsmith, 26, a video producer from London, who joined Chloe at the front of the line, said he had missed “meeting random people” and making friends. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long ... basically since we locked down. I love going to clubs and I love meeting random people. You make great friends and you couldn’t do that until tonight.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is self-isolating, put out a video defending his decision to lift lockdown but also urging caution: “If we don’t do it now, we have to ask ourselves, when will we ever do it. So this is the right moment. But we’ve got to do it cautiously. We’ve got to remember that this virus is sadly still out there. Cases are rising, we can see the extreme contagiousness of the Delta variant. But we have this immense consolation and satisfaction that there is no doubt at all that the vaccine programme — the massive vaccination programme — has very severely weakened the link between infection and hospitalisation, and between infection and serious illness and death.

“So please, please, please be cautious and go forward tomorrow into the next step with all the right prudence and respect for other people and the risks that the disease continues to present.” But, above the deafening music in the night clubs, he cannot be heard.