Not as easy as it first appeared. Many of you sent in attempts at this very popular problem . The most common mistakes in your arguments involved rounding to the nearest minute and assuming that the only time the hands cross is at twelve o'clock. One of you pointed out that on a standard clock the hour hand never passes over the minute hand - it is always the other way around - a bit of a red herring!

Two correct solutions were received from Hannah of the School of St. Helens and St. Katharine and Andrei of School 205, Bucharest. It is Hannah's solution that is given below. Well done Hannah.

This took me a couple of attempts; it wasn't as simple as it first seemed because of all the fractions of time that are involved.

Firstly - 8 miles is approximately a quarter of the distance travelled in an hour at a speed of 33mph, so we are looking at a journey time of just less than 15 minutes.

More precisely:-