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Through bins, I'm guessing what you saw was the very thin crescent of Venus badly distorted :-)
--
simon

Yours is one of eleven observations of this object I've received so far, the others made from sites scattered across southern England and south Wales, east as far as Hertfordshire, north to Warwickshire, and west as far as Rhondda Cynon Taf and the south coast of mid Devon. Most of the witnesses were on the road at the time, so regrettably positional information on the object's flight is very sketchy. My preliminary analysis suggests the start may have been somewhere high above the upper Severn estuary, around Herefordshire-Worcestershire-Gloucestershire perhaps, and the fireball likely flew from there at an angle between north-south to northeast-southwest, possibly ending above Devon-Cornwall, but more likely out over the Channel west of Start Point. The end especially is little more than a best-guess, however. It seems to have been quite swift-moving, so it is most unlikely any meteorites will have survived. Two observers reported the object fragmented in mid-flight, but the majority - like yourself - saw no such break-up, possibly because of different viewing angles to the trail. Various striking colours were noted by different people, commonly blue, green and white in the head and red, orange or yellow in the tail, and it may have left a short-lived persistent train. Some of the early sightings and comments can be found on the SPA's Observing Forum, at:

http://www.popastro.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11440