Last Saturday night, after eleven, I was stood staring up up at the stars having a last ciggarette in my rural english garden.(Smoking banned by healt conciouse wife!) My eyes darted from one object to the next and the usual planes that fly over. But then I focused on a star like immage that moved east-west. I only saw it for about 5 degress of its travel. It was far too high for a plane (and I do know what I’m talking about), and too slow for a shooting star.
Any ideas?
Well, I doubt you saw a ‘saterlite’ but you probably saw a satellite. 
I am not sure how much light pollution you have in your area. I live in the US and go camping alot in areas with almost no light pollution and looking up at the stars and tracking satellites are a great way to end the day. IIRC you can tell the different types of satellites by their path and speed. I don’t remember the details but I think that fast moving satellites tend to be government owned. I could be wrong. (In fact I am probably wrong, I haven’t thought about this stuff in years)
I believe that most satellite move west to east, ignoring polar orbits, but once again I could be wrong.
Slee
(who is too tired to look this stuff up)
There’s lots and lots of satellites up there and it’s not unusual to see them. Many do have polar orbits as well.
Now for a question of my own. My Dad always said that they circle the Earth in a mere 90 minutes. This has always astounded me. Is it true?
If they’re in a low polar orbit, then, yes, the period is about 100 minutes - the satellites orbit at around 1000km above ground height.
More likely a meteor, or a piece of space junk re-entering.
You could always check Heavens Above. Enter a time, and your position, and it’ll tell you what to expect to see in the sky - including the ISS and satelites
The ones that are really impressive are the Iridium satellites;
when the sun glints off their solar panels they can briefly be brighter than any star.
I used to see them in the night sky in northern Michigan(very little light pollution). The things are a dime a dozen and very visible, its probably a pretty good chance thats what you saw.
I remember when I was a kid in the seventies, we went camping and my dad was proud to point out two sattelites whose path intersected. Those two were about all there was for sattelite viewing in those days. I’ll be able to proudly point out to my son another sattelite every five or ten minutes. I suspect he’ll point out to his son “If you look at one spot long enough, the ones that don’t move are sometimes stars!”