A mental block with Passed vs Past

Passed vs past gets me every time. It's one of those combis I'm never convinced I'm using correctly and the more I say the sentence aloud, the more unlikely either sound!

If you struggle with it as well, Daily Writing Tips has a great post here to help you out.

We passed through the town or we past through the town?

A good idea is to write the sentence in the present tense: We will pass through / We pass through... so "passed" is correct in this instance.

However, as the article points out, past would be used in this context: We walked past a shop on our way to the town.

Now that's where I get confused and often use passed!