It might help if you let us know where this was.

We live stockton on tees but planes were a little further south going out towards North Sea was about 12.45 lunch time the small planes were so. Close surrounding larger plane

I can't hazard a guess what was happening but perhaps someone else may have an idea.

Sounds to me like an air-to-air refuelling exercise - the RAF use Airbus A330s as refuelling tankers (or could have been American AF who use a military version of the Boeing 707 as tankers). There is an exercise area off the NE coast.

Cheers,
Ralph

Sorry, I meant to post days ago and now the time table for the day related to your post, it has been & gone and is no longer available.
I would hazard a guess that what you saw, is related to the link below.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/operational-low-flying-training-timetable

PS: when I first looked at the site, the day, location and time were about right for your query - and it mentioned a Hercules.

Sanji