"Martin wrote in message ...after I wrote

I've found a picture of one and it wasn't it. Shell was very like a
normal
garden snail in shape, not elongated, and was (worn?) white where the
snail
wasn't living. Actual animal was perfect, rather beautiful, and grey in
colour.

Then perhaps it was a Roman Snail, Helix pomatia; but I wouldn't have
called
this 'huge' in quite the terms you used - it's about half as big again as
the garden snail Helix aspersa. There are other similar large snails from
farther afield such as Helix lucorum, but I don't know of any of these
actually living in the wild in the UK.

Doing a bit of surfing the web and looking at various pictures I think H.
lucorum looks the closest, although, as I've already said, it was not a
perfect undamaged specimen. It is certainly big enough at 6cm max shell dia
and I understand it can take the cold.
I must take my camera on these walks in future. :-)

--
Bob

www.pooleygreengrowers.org.uk/ about an Allotment site in
Runnymede fighting for it's existence.