It should be a great night tonight when Carlisle stages its final jumps meeting of the spring.

The first race will be just before 6pm so, given the glorious weather, get along nice and sharp as the gates open two hours earlier.

The seven-race card features six races over hurdles and concludes with a national hunt flat contest, the last national hunt contest until we go jumping again on October 19.

Nicky Henderson, recently crowned champion jumps trainer, hasn’t had a runner at Carlisle for at least five seasons but I see he has pencilled in an entry for Turn Turk in the BDS Digital Handicap Hurdle.

It will be interesting to see if the Lambourn handler becomes the latest high-profile name to enjoy the delights of the Blackwell circuit.

Nico De Boinville has been booked for the ride on Ben Pauling-trained Red Indian while Donald McCain will make a late call on whether to run Cousin Oscar or Viserion.

Our next meeting sees the first Flat fixture on Monday, May 22 when the action is set to get under way at 2.20pm.

Lorcan Murtagh hasn’t wasted much time in cementing his new relationship with McCain as the pair teamed up to strike with Man Look at Sedgefield last Thursday night.

Their nine-length win in the opening conditional jockeys’ maiden hurdle was the fourth success in the race in as many years for McCain’s Cheshire stable.

Lorcan looks as if he will be riding plenty for his new boss, so my bet is he will lose his allowance pretty quickly and may be a decent value bet for the conditional riders’ title.

There was other Cumbrian wins at the County Durham venue as Lisa Harrison and Dianne Sayer were both on the mark.

Lisa took the 2m handicap chase with Muwalla, ridden by last terms northern champion conditional pilot Callum Bewley.

It was Muwalla’s fourth course win from just 13 visits. And he has been places on five occasions as well.

Dianne was victorious an hour later as Sendiym landed the 2m 5f handicap hurdle for Brian Hughes. The Hackthorpe raider, co-owned by Dianne’s husband Andrew, was scoring for the first time in a year.

As reported here last week, the Maurice Barnes stable is in grand fettle and another winner arrived in the shape of No Such Number in the last race at Hexham on Saturday night.

It was a one-two for our region as the five-length victor was chased home by Martin Todhunter’s Pekanheim.

No Such Number, running for the Barnes yard since arriving from Sandy Forster’s Yetholm stable, seemed to enjoy dropping back to 2m 4f and is worth keeping an eye on now he has opened his account over fences.