How to keep the memories of your Camino de Santiago

Ask someone who walked the Camino de Santiago two years ago what they remember and they will tell you “it was amazing”. Ask about the details (the town where they slept on day four, what they talked about with that pilgrim, the bar where they stopped for coffee) and you will see them slip away.

It is not a lack of emotion. The Camino is lived very fast and kept very badly. This guide is written from O Porriño, where the Portuguese Way passes every morning, and gathers the ways of keeping it that really work.

Why the Camino fades

• Photos get mixed up. Back home they sit among screenshots, work photos and memes. Without a date or stage, months later you no longer know where each one was taken.
• The journal gets abandoned. Almost everyone starts one. Almost nobody gets past day three: you reach the albergue exhausted, with blisters and a shower still to take.
• Names get lost. Towns, albergues and people blur quickly, because every day is new.

Five ways to keep your Camino

1. A short note every day

You do not need to write a page. Two sentences when you reach the albergue are enough: where you slept, who you walked with and what you do not want to forget. What you write in the moment is remembered differently.

2. Organised photos

Create an album on your phone before you leave and put each day's photos there, or rename them by stage. Ten minutes at night save you hours back home, when you will no longer know where each one was.

3. The pilgrim document

The stamps from albergues, churches and bars are, without meaning to be, a map of the journey. Keep it safe when you finish: it is one of the keepsakes people look at most over the years.

4. A small thing from each place

A stone, a leaf, a bus ticket. Keep it light: every gram is carried for hundreds of kilometres.

5. Something that does it for you

That is the idea behind Waymino: a silicone band you wear for the whole Camino. Hold your phone near it and your journal opens, with no app to install, and you save the photo or the note in seconds. The date, the stage and your point on the Way are saved on their own. It works without signal and has no battery.

When you reach Santiago, one tap turns the journal into a memory video with your route, your photos and your notes.

It is not an official document and does not replace the stamps. It is the memory, which is something else.

What people are most glad they kept

• The names of the people you walk with. Ask them to write them down for you.
• What you felt when you saw the cathedral from Monte do Gozo or walked into the Obradoiro.
• The hard moments too: the rainy stage, the blister on day six. Over the years they are the stories you tell most.

If you are walking in 2027

2027 is a Compostela Holy Year, and more pilgrims than ever are expected. If that is you, decide before you leave how you are going to keep it. Once you are walking, the Camino leaves no time to think about it.

Buen Camino.