A mother told how she was in the middle of baking a birthday cake for her son when she learned he and his younger brother had been in a car crash.

Helen Ryan was preparing for Gary Edwards' 23rd birthday celebrations the next day when she found out he was being airlifted to hospital and his brother Martin, 20, had been killed.

Gary died shortly afterwards in the operating theatre at Frenchay hospital Bristol and yesterday the boys' parents, Helen Ryan and David Edwards, spoke for the first time to pay tribute to their sons after an inquest failed to find out what caused the accident on the A49 at Lyde in Herefordshire.

Hereford deputy coroner Mark Bricknell recorded a verdict of accidental death after hearing the boys were on the way to a go-carting centre on a Sunday morning last November when Gary lost control of his Vauxhall Astra which spun into a Honda Accord travelling in the opposite direction.

Second year geography student Martin had come home from Durham University to join the birthday outing with Gary's workmates and the family celebrations the following day.

"They were very close and Martin had come home for his brother's birthday on the Monday," said their tearful mother after the inquest at Hereford town hall.

"At the time of the accident I had Gary's cake baking in the oven and his girlfriend was on the way over to blow up the balloons. She was going to hide them in my bedroom so we could surprise him.

"We were all going to spend the day together. On the Monday it snowed and I know they would have been so excited and made a snowman together. They were good boys who worked hard and I could not have wished for better sons.

"From the time they were born they were never any trouble and all I ever heard from anyone was that they were good as gold. They were my life."

Hardworking and quietly spoken Gary had been a manager at Motorworld branches in Bristol and Tewkesbury before returning to Hereford to work for a tyre firm.

The inquest heard Gary was driving, Martin was sitting in the front passenger seat and friend Gareth Hook was in the back when all they set off towards Leominster.

Elderly Honda driver Kenneth Undale told the hearing he was on his way to a bottle bank in Hereford and had just come over the brow of a hill when he saw the Astra coming towards him.

"Next thing it was in front of me and I had nowhere to go," he said.

Martin was killed instantly when he was thrown out the car but firefighters and surgeons spent more than an hour trying to save Gary who was trapped in the wreckage.

Accident investigator Alan Paton said he could not find any marks on the road or other clues to say why the Astra started to spin out of control before hitting the Accord.

He said the rain was light and he speculated Gary might have lost concentration for a short time and then swerved slightly after being startled by the Accord coming over the hill.

But he told the boys' parents it was impossible to give them the answers they wanted and said: "There is no way of telling how he lost control and how fast he was going when he lost control."

After the inquest father David said Gary had been driving since he was 17 but was known as a sensible young man and was so safety conscious he had scolded him over his tyres and made his girlfriend take extra driving qualifications.

Helen said: "Martin was so clever, He could have done anything he wanted but the day before the accident he told me he wanted to come home and train to be a teacher."