I'm obviously doing it the wrong way round! My house is on the edge of our (small) town, and my office is a pair of converted houses in a small village about 18 km (12 miles) away as the crow flies.
I drive to/from work most days because I'm a lazy arse, and it takes about 15-20 minutes each way whichever road-route I choose. The shortest route is 18.5 km, but has villages every couple of km, several of which have speed-limits down to 30 km/h (the cops do occasionally install temporary speed-cameras, so it pays to be a little bit cautious, at least in the mornings). The longer route(s) goes through fewer villages, with faster roads, but adds about 5 km to the distance, so I don't save any time by using them — except in subzero winters, because as bus-routes they get salted and ploughed, whereas the short route isn't/doesn't.
Once the clocks have gone forwards at the end of March (and the weather's not horrible!) I aim to bike to work once a week, ideally twice, usually along(side) the short route. With a tailwind, I need as 'little' as 45-50 minutes one way; with a headwind, that can extend to 55-65 minutes (today I had a crosswind, and it took me 56 minutes). On any given bike-day, the homeward journey always takes a couple of minutes less, because I get the longer downhills and shorter uphills in that direction.
(There's also a 17.5 km bike-route possible, which swaps about 5 km of bike-path for about 4 km of "Feld-/Forst-weg", i.e. dirt-track 'maintained' for tractor-usage, but that's become pretty much unride-able over the past couple of years — so again, no time saved)
