GIMP :: Path To Selection Always Clockwise?

I have an image, and I want to add some text along a curved path beneath it. Imagine the motto beneath a coat of arms, or a product or company name beneath a logo.

Now, I tried using the text tool to add the text along a path, and I think that I now understand how that works.

Now it turns out that there is a feature missing that I would like to see, which is that text justification should make the text conform to the ends or centre of the path... by this, I mean that if I draw a path and the text is too short to fill the whole of the path, I should be able to centre the text along the path.

The way around this that came to mind is that if the path is a circle then I can place my text starting anywhere, and then rotate that layer to centre the text beneath the image.

So I make a circle selection, and convert the selection to a path... but the path seems to start at the top of the circle (I don't now what you want to call it: 0°, 12 o'clock, top dead centre, North?) and go clockwise... meaning that if I rotate my text to be below the image it will be upside down.

My work-round is to create a temporary layer and draw a circle on it, then use that as a guide to create a path along part of the circle in an anti-clockwise direction.

But I thought that there might be a mechanism for easily swapping the start and end positions of a path,another, better way if placing text below an image,a way of centring text along a path.