Manti's comment encourraged me to try this again (was 4 off). As it turns out, reading all the comments I see it was unlike with what was happening to some other people, here, namely: I wasn't losing steps in the end, on the contrary ... I was loosing them very early on. LOL
When I was trying this for the first time, I also encountered a level, that Manti have made and I believe it was born because of THIS level (to train the ending).
All in all I'm happy to have cleared this level. I like it, thouhg it's quite a long one. But having made some ''picture-like'' levels myself, I know how it is. You can't just make it shorter (if you want to keep the picture).
Integrating path like it's done here, is far from easy. So, five stars, from me.
This was so difficult when I solved it years and years ago. This time through I understand pipeline things so much better and the cuts that made me so frustrated back in the day came easy this time.
May not be optimal. Compared to the 599 record I had before, the only difference I made in the route was the end. Optimizing the end section is the greatest pipelining challenge I've seen in a PP2 level.