A cascade of lights

Last night I reported on the impossibility of feeling fear before the beauty of the Northumbrian night. Well, tonight I did experience something akin to fear, albeit mixed with fascination.

The glow was brighter than last night, casting a supernatural heat over everything. The new pony across the road, a misanthrope during the day, was out in the quiet night, munching grass. Fluffy and I walked up the hill, and on the way back something caught my attention on the left, from what I take to be a northwesterly direction. At first sight it looked like a tunnel made up of lights in the sky, very much like stars but a little brighter and redder, moving diagonally down and left towards the horizon. Immediately the trees obscured my vision on that side and I felt impelled to walk faster past the trees so I could make sure I had really seen what I thought I had seen.

Past the trees, the tunnel had dispersed into a line, a casually curving procession of stars still progressing down in the same general direction. By the time I reached home most of the component lights had gone, presumably behind the horizon; there were only a few visible, perhaps ten of them, but enough for K to come out and see them and to agree that it was a most extraordinary phenomenon. A few minutes later all the lights had gone, leaving only the usual stars in their places, only a lot more visible in what is perhaps the most luminous night sky I have ever seen.

Does anybody know what those lights were?