Celebrations for the Tamar Bridge’s 60th anniversary are under way, beginning tomorrow (Sunday) with a crossing of the bridge by a cavalcade of pre-1961 vehicles belonging to members of the Tamar Historic Transport Club (THTC).

At a press event on Friday allowing reporters and photographers to interview those who run and maintain the Tamar Bridge, as well as those helping the public to explore its heritage through the Bridging the Tamar visitor centre on the Plymouth side of the crossing, the THTC’s Dave Fry – a St Dominick parish councillor who is also involved in the village’s new Community Shop – was in the visitor centre car park with his cream-coloured 1952 Austin A40 Sports car.

The idea of the cavalcade is to celebrate the extraordinary change to local people’s way of life that the opening of the bridge brought. Gone were the queues of the cars waiting for the Saltash ferry that one stretched all the way up the hill from the Waterside to Fore Street, or the long diversion around Callington and Tavistock via the single-track bridge at Gunnislake. Suddenly getting across the Tamar from South East Cornwall to Plymouth became a whole lot quicker and easier.

Dave said that while members of the club had a whole range of vehicles right up to those from fairly recent decades, Sunday’s cavalcade was being restricted to vehicles which were 60 years old and above. He said that originally the club was told that 12 could take part, but now 16 owners had signed up with their pre-1961 cars. As well as his Austin A40 Sports, which will be leading the cavalcade, some of the other cars expected to take part including a 1959 Ford Popular and, hopefully if the weather permits, a 1914 Model T Ford.

The vintage and classic vehicles will be gathering in the Bridging the Tamar centre car park near the Bridge Manager’s office at midday, and it is expected that the first cavalcade across the bridge from Devon to Cornwall will begin at around 12.30pm. When asked if they would all have to pay the toll to cross back from Cornwall to Devon, he said that they had been given “a special code” to avoid that.

Dave has written on the THTC Facebook page: “We will probably go over the bridge two or three times just to see how far it is across! Hopefully there will be plenty of publicity for our little club from the media coverage on the day.”