A FOREIGN holiday had a horrible ending for a man who was driving home from the airport when he was in a head-on collision with a motorcyclist who later died.

Martin Lewis, of Acorn Cottage, Bircher, near Leominster, told a Hereford inquest."I was driving around a bend when suddenly there was a motorbike coming towards me on the wrong side of the road. There was nothing I could do,"

He was driving his Volvo car home from Birmingham airport when the accident happened on a Sunday afternoon last June.

The motorcyclist, Dean Peplow, aged 38, of Load Street in Bewdley, was taken by air ambulance to Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, where he died later the same day.

PC David Sidley, who investigated the accident, said the 1,000cc Honda Fireblade bike was "a very powerful machine" that was a metre on the wrong side of the road when the accident happened on the A456 at Little Hereford.

PC Sidley told the inquest the closing speed was such that the driver would only have had a split second to react.

Sheryle Beasley, the girlfriend of the dead man, said in a statement that he was an experienced and competent rider.

"It was just an accident, two people in the wrong place at the wrong time," she added.

Pathologist Dr Mark Hayes said the rider had received a brain haemorrhage and fractures to the pelvis and spine.

He had no alcohol in his blood but low levels of cocaine were found, though this did not have any involvement in the accident.

Sheryle Beasley told the inquest her partner had used the drug two days before the accident.

Coroner David Halpern recorded a verdict of accidental death.