I'd never really appreciated just how much stuff is floating around in orbit around the earth. The estimate is 35000 man made objects, according to space.com; a mix of satellites and miscellaneous debris. I happened to be stargazing last night, and saw 1 meteor and 2 slow moving objects at very high altitude, which moved in a straight line for about 30 seconds before disappearing. Wasn't sure what they were, but presumably some sort of satellite.

More interestingly, NASA has an customizable RSS feed that provides a list of opportunities to view manned spacecraft. The link below is for Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Most of these are at fairly unsociable hours, but it sounds like the International Space Station is worth looking out for - brighter than Sirius, so should be fairly easy to spot.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/rss/index.cgi?country=United_Kingdom®ion=England&city=Newcastle

And from Space.com, the article below provides general adive on Satellite spotting!

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090619-how-to-find-satellites.html

Happy stargazing. Remember, the truth is out there!