Hello from the Baltic Sea :)

I’m blogging on a cruise liner, cutting across the waves. 16 hour voyage from Stockholm to Helsinki. I get why it’s called the Baltic Sea…Just went out on deck to wave goodbye to Sweden and my face fell off…

I’m still feeling all cosy though from the warm reception Ally and I received in Sweden. Many lovely folk who I’d never met before but will now never forget. Even though I walked through more rain than in any other country, I think the 16 day trek from Copenhagen to Stockholm was my favourite leg of the whole Road to Change so far.

Finally, I wasn’t the only guy in Scandinavia wearing a kilt. It’s strange to think Ally and I had only met once, at a Hogmanay party, but we’d stayed in touch and since hearing about my10,000mile walk, he was determined to come over and be a part of it. At first, he had planned to walk with me, even training with 25 mile hikes from Loch Lomond back to Glasgow, but as Ashtyn had to get back to Berlin Yvonne was without a carer. It worked out for the best as Ally is a keen motorhome enthusiast and, as it turned out, a pretty good cook :)

Ashtyn had mentioned Yvonne’s steering had suddenly gone very heavy one day. Luckily, Ally has a clue about vans and figured out there is a leek in the steering fluid holdery thing. Yvonne was still drivable so we decided to set off on time and hope we’d hit a repair shop on the way. Which we did, one day 2 in Sweden. Ally has the gift of the gab and so it took very little input from me for Tobias Jonsson at Bengt I orkelljunga (motorhome repair shop) to patch it up completely free of charge. Tobi was the first of many kind and generous Swedes we were to meet.

Since passing that (thankfully dead) Wild Boar, I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of walking alone through 600 more km of dense forrest but I’ve now had my first positive experience with these wild ‘swine’. Ally parked Yvonne outside the hunting lodge owned by Tarja and Magnus. Tarja, who coincidently works with child victims in very rural Sweden, came out to see what the strange logo’d van was all about. Within minutes she had donated fruit, home-grown corm, bread and meat (self caught Elk and Boar) These random acts of kindness really do brighten a rainy day and make the journey so unforgettable. You all must try Elk and Boar, they’re just awesome! (Especially the way Al cooks them)

I had no picture in my head of what Sweden looked like before getting there. It is so unfathomably beautiful. Hundreds of miles of thick green forrest which I image has remained unchanged for millennia. Truly timeless. out there alone in the wilderness it’s quite possible forget what year it actually is. It didn’t help that the only cars that occasionally passed were normally immaculate restorations of 1950s American classics. Seems to be a big thing there. The country is also as dotted with water as the Netherlands but not its so regimented. Sweden has not coerced their lakes into canals but left everything as it has always been. I loved this. Almost every night, Ally would park Yvonne beside some stunning scenery and I began to feel so privileged to be there at this time of year on this crazy journey. Sitting by water has always been my favourite way to clear my mind. As Doogie says in Kelpie, “The deep peace of it would seep into me.” Closing my eyes and hearing nothing but the gentle waves, I get to imagine for a minute that I’m back home, Sweet Home Balmaha, sitting with Tommy and Donni on our beach, just up the road from Glasgow…

Anyhoo…only 8000miles to go…

If you’re ever in Stockholm, you must visit ‘Rost’. It is by far the coolest arts cafe on the planet. Run by Zannah Parmenius and her husband, it’s half ‘his’ motorcylce repair shop and half ‘her’ music cafe. Zannah massaged me on the Road to Change Facebook page and invited us down. I thought we were just going for some free scran but when we got there, Zannah introduced me to the gorgeous Janet Simmonds, and said Janet will be singing for ‘Road to Change tonight’. I then realised many of the people there were survivors. Zannah had sent the word round of our arrival and they’d all came down to meet us and show support. Janet sang and the room listened. She has a voice to be reckoned with and her songs remind you that you’re alive. I was so honoured to be there with all those lovely people at this impromptu concert. After I spoke about child sexual abuse, Zannah asked me to sing a ‘Scottish Song’. I just about managed to sing Caladonia without howling…

John Lanser, the Laughter Coach who walked with me as I left Copenhagen, told me that the talk I gave to the Danish survivors group ‘Spor’, had inspired him to tell his friends and family that he is a survivor. He’s added this along with his contact details to his website. If any survivor in Denmark wishes to get in touch, John is happy and ready to be there for them. He mentioned too that he’d like to write a song with me. I am published as a songwriter but haven’t had much time or opportunity to create anything on the road, so I welcomed the idea. John’s lives in Denmark but his wonderful friend Pauline Salzer (also a Laughter Coach) lives not far from Stockholm, so as I waved ‘good bye for now’ to Ally and Yvonne, I headed off to Vasteras to get creative (and hopefully experience what this ‘Laughter Therapy’ is all about). Pauline’s home is just adorable. She lives on a tiny wee island in a very Swedish little cottage. I had a feeling the second I saw her cosy wee home that this was exactly what I needed. She made John and I feel very welcome and even cooked three wonderfully warming wintery soups in the short time I was there. I asked if they were ‘Swedish’ but she said that they were ‘Pauline’. I hope one day there will be ‘Pauline take aways’ as commonplace in every town as ‘Chinese’ ones are now. John is a remarkable singer songwriter and musician. Just listening to him play Pauline’s old piano was joy enough for me but we had came together to make music and so we spent some hours playing and singing out some ideas. It sounded nice but I noticed that it wasn’t flowing as easily as my usual musicy attempts. It was like I couldn’t really hear my own creative voice. I wondered if this was because John and I were trying to write a song about the Road to Change but it’s difficult for me to remove myself from the walk and look at it artistically. I was really trying though and appreciated the lovely opportunity to be spend time with them in such beautiful surroundings but I couldn’t shake the distinctly ‘floaty’ feeling. I came to realise that having walked 3108km, visiting nine cities and meeting hundred of survivors then waving bye to all that for a day and retreating to this idilic cottage to play, I simply felt deeply exhausted. I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate this, especially as John had travelled so far to work with me. The pressured melted though when he suggested we laugh for a while. I figured I could give it a go. I can’t really describe what happened next but it ended with all three of lying on the floor in hysterics for about half an hour and I certainly felt amazing after it. If you ever get the chance to experience laughter therapy, dive in. For survivors especially, it can simply and naturally make you feel good when life can seem to be getting too heavy.

I must also thank ‘Mia’ at the Stockholm’s massage Clinic, for the free authentic Swedish massage. It was so kind of her to donate her time and skill and was probably exactly what my body needed but what I but it was not the relaxing experience I had been hoping for…

In other news…We caused our first wee Road to Change ‘controversy’ in Stockholm. While at the gig in Rost, I was invited by the band ‘Cold sweat’ to come on stage and address their crowd about the Road to Change, which I was more than excited to do. Unfortunately, the venue didn’t feel that a man who’d walked from London to speak about Child Sexual Abuse was in keeping with the tone of the evening and refused to let me speak. In solidarity, Janet Simmonds, who had been booked as the support act that night refused to play. She is an angel of a lady and has told me that the Road to Change has changed her perception on speaking out about abuse.

My last night in Stockholm was at the home of my old friend Andreas and his beautiful wife Yohanna. Both Swedish actors, Andreas and I received or acting degrees together at Queen Margaret in Edinburgh and Yohanna recently won the Swedish equivalent of the Best Actress BAFTA. I was sadly unable to attend their wedding as I was walking through Luxembourg at the time but they showed me their wedding video. This was unlike any wedding video I had ever heard of. Its actually a music video featuring just them and a major band (Swedish, I presume) This video, in which they dance and fight and get very Swedishly nakie, recently won an award at the LA film festival. I couldnt tell if Andreas and Yohanna are just exceptionally cool or if all Swedish couples are this sexy but it was a very pleasant culture shock to spend some time with them. That night, I shared the Kelpie movie with them, which really made me regret not showing them the English-subtitled version…

The next morning (today) I boarded this ship and am now making my way to city and county number nine, Helsinki Finland!

And on…

Till next time, thanks for reading

Matty x