I was driving down the lane to my house, it was around 5.15pm and dark, with some cloud coverage. As I turned the corner on the lane I noticed a beam of light shining down from the clouds which appeared to be over my house or the bottom of my garden/field. At first I thought wow the moon is shinning a beam over my house, as I got closed within a few seconds I keep staring and the beam seemed too intense and straight, then suddenly the beam switched off (like a torch) and a egg/balloon shape lit up, which made the clouds around it become brighter, it looked slightly transparent and was half in the clouds and half out, then suddenly it shot up vertically as such speed. When I arrived at my house (about 30 seconds to a minute) I let my dog out and he started barking for a few seconds. During my short car journey and as I was looking at the object I tried to rationalise what this could be but I know what I saw.