Suggestion: Mark the phrase "and will, of course, return you to your starting point" in bold or rephrase it to point out that the given path must return you to the startying point. (not a native speaker here.)
I ended up in a situation where I was not back at the starting position but still had time to find my way back on my own. I thought this is a valid solution, but it wasn't and only after pondering over the strict sense of the instructions many times I realized I was spending way to much thinking into that problem than I had to.