Where do you keep a log of your activities ?

[keithj]

I've been doing outdoory stuff since my teens. But only in the last 20 years do I have any record of what I've done and when.

I have date stamped photos from 20 years ago which records the date and time I was in various places. I also have a very sparse blog for more interesting activities, but its an effort to update it. Seven years ago I got a GPS watch which logged exactly where I went and when.... so I have over 1000 GPX files.

My Garmin watch uploads activities to Strava automatically. Using the GPX log of every activity my watch has been on Strava gives some interesting stats - apparently in the last seven years I've spent over 2000 hours on the trails.

statsFeb2025.jpg (25.17 KiB) Viewed 2108 times

I was suprised to see that in that time I've ascended 511km - that's nearly sixty Mt Everests. 99% of the time I return to the start, so my knees have done that much descent too.

Strava also shows weekly and monthly stats for time, distance and vert ascended.

StravaVert.jpg (19.3 KiB) Viewed 2108 times

It's nice to look back on my activities and stats, but I'd rather have a better way of doing it than Strava.

So... what apps/sites do people use to log all their activities & photos ? preferably with as little friction as possible.

[sandym]

My partner is a computer coder so we have a custom database. It's pretty cool because you can search by date, location, trip partners, even words in the text.

[Son of a Beach]

In my brain.

But I get fairly poor results for queries to that information repository.

[phATty]

Peakbagger, most of my trips include summits. Despite that, there are a couple that don't that slip through the cracks so I have to also resort to my brain at times.

[ChrisJHC]

I also use my memory and (gasp) sometimes I don’t even take any photos!

Does that mean the hikes didn’t happen?

[north-north-west]

Photos. Written diaries. Brain (least reliable).

[johnw]

Mainly a huge volume of photos in folders on my PC, usually one per walk but sometimes several walks lumped together if away for an extended period. Any multi day walks are sometimes split into individual days, but not always. That 20 something year old system desperately needs me to re-organise it, apply a standard naming convention and label things before I get too old (if I can remember them ) - and back it up, which I haven't done for ages. Also a fair number of photos on my phone, mainly just local doddles near home and I saw something interesting, or as a backup, or I forgot to take a proper camera.
Very occasionally a trip report on here or an article in the emag.