Paul, I dont think it was auroras mate - nothing much reported lately - possibly some kind of air glow/gravity acoustic waves?
you can only usually see that from very dark skies and then still very rare i think - i have nevr seen it? - if there is any colour, mild to weaker auroras lean to the red with the eye the majority of the time if its on that sort of scale - or mostly just plain whitish glows - looks like (white) light pollution with some car headlights thrown in (or like the old hollywood searchlights they had at movie premieres but in the distance - sort of) moving around the sky, a lot of the time from the mainland.
Kearn