You can hold a place vividly and have lost the way there. The room, the light, the smell of it stay while the turnings, the bus number, the sequence of streets quietly go. Memory keeps meaning and drops procedure, because the procedure was only ever a means and got no attention of its own.

If a place matters to you and you have lost the route, that is not a sign the memory is failing. It is a sign of what your mind decided to keep. And if you want to be able to return, writing the practical part down now is the cheap version of a much harder later task.