Saturday with Anton Savage: 'If I don’t have a pint of coffee by 9am I start trembling'

Newstalk's Anton Savage joins Doireann Ní Ghlacáin in the first episode of the new series of ‘Tracks and Trails’

06.00

I get up between 6 and 6.30am – I’d love it if I could lie in until 9.30am or 10am but when you’re used to getting up at 4am every morning you wake up early.

I check my phone for news and emails – in the habit of having done weekend radio my immediate thought is ‘Has any news broken overnight? Will anything break today that I need to be prepared for tomorrow?’.

07.00

As a younger man my breakfast was coffee and Marlboros – I’ve weaned myself off the Marlboros but the coffee still pertains. I have a machine with a timer on it so there’s a litre and a half of coffee waiting for me every morning which travels with me to work. Even on a Saturday, if I don’t have a pint of coffee in my system by 9am I start getting headaches and trembles.

08.00

I’m very bad at maintenance so there’ll always be a list of stuff that I should have gotten to. Last weekend involved replacing the fence that blew down a month ago. Before that it was disassembling the tumble dryer.

10.00

It’ll be time to walk the dog as he’ll be looking forlorn. I tend to cycle around the park to run the legs off him. He’s a large emotional golden retriever called Sandy. He is full of feelings – there’s always a slight ennui – sadness that the day is ending, sadness that you’re moving into the other room, sadness that he can’t find the sock he likes – I don’t know what his problem is but his sadness improves with exercise.

I really enjoy getting up a mountain or going somewhere I haven’t been before. One of my favourite places is in the Cooley Mountains – I spent a lot of time there with my father when I was small so it was great to explore it for the new season of Tracks and Trails.

Anton Savage: 'I really enjoy getting up a mountain or going somewhere I haven’t been before.'

12.00

Lunch tends to be functional – soup or a sandwich.

13.00

I’ve always had motorbikes and increasingly I’m being drawn into things associated with biking so I’ll spend three or four hours on a Saturday on the bike. I got invited to do a charity event crossing Route 66 from Chicago to LA last year for Children’s Health Foundation and there’s another event this autumn. Everyone has to raise about €15,000 to go so there’s currently gatherings of bikers in advance of that. The group has raised hundreds of thousands for the charity in the past few years.

There’s also a group called ROSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) who do advanced rider and driver training – I’ll meet up with a group of other motorcyclists to hone my skills and to practise not being dead. Motorcyclists make up something like one percent of road users and 16 percent of road deaths so it’s a dangerous pursuit – staying not dead is tricky and important.

18.00

Dinner in my house can be a six or even 48-hour voyage of time-wasting. I recently discovered the joys of sous-viding, so on a Thursday night I’ll put something in water and see what happens. I’m not sure I’m into cooking as much as I am into the daft physics and engineering of it all. I have 965 food thermometers – if I can find a way to judge the internal temperature of a piece of meat to within .2 of a degree I’m happy. As to what it tastes like? Who cares?!

20.00

I never voluntarily leave the house if I don’t have to – I didn’t spend all that money on my couch and fridge to be away from them. Until recently, Saturday was a school night for me, so the fact that it’s not now means I can sit in front of the fire, read a book and maybe watch a movie after that.

Until my twenties I was an avid reader of fiction and then I wandered away from it although I’ve recently been re-reading Hemingway and Steinbeck. My favourite books tend to be in the genres of history, popular science, economics, biographies and sociology.

When it comes to TV I veer more and more towards documentaries. I have no interest in fashion but recently found myself enjoying White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, and Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel.

02.00

The sensible thing to do would be to go to bed early but because I’ve done that all week I really want to milk it. Milking it means reading and watching TV until 2am. I’ll wake up on Sunday morning at 6am wondering why I stayed up so late the night before.

Anton Savage with Doireann Ní Ghlacáin in the new series of ‘Tracks and Trails’

• Broadcaster and journalist Anton Savage joins Doireann Ní Ghlacáin in the first episode of the new series of ‘Tracks and Trails’ on a walk from the ancient woodland of Ravensdale Forest to the coastal village of Omeath, taking in views of Carlingford Lough along the way. Watch the first episode Friday, April 10, at 8.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.