Medfield, MA: Five Ponds and a Long Drive
Medfield is the longest drive on the Canton side of this list, about 25 minutes, and it is also a town that owns five ponds. That combination says something about what people there value.
Fifteen miles, twenty-five minutes
From Medfield Town Hall at 459 Main Street it is 14.9 miles and about 26 minutes to the Canton gym, out through Norfolk and up Route 1 to Route 138. From Medfield High School on South Street it is 15.2 miles and 26 minutes. Raynham is 32.7 miles and roughly 46 minutes, so it is not the practical option unless you are already down that way for work.
Clear-road numbers from OpenStreetMap routing. Twenty-five minutes is the top of what this page can honestly ask, and it is still shorter than a lot of people’s commute.
Five ponds and a mill from 1702
The town owns five large ponds: Kingsbury, Danielson or Richie’s, Meetinghouse or Baker’s, Vine Lake or Cemetery, and Flynn’s. Kingsbury Pond was created in 1702 when a grist and sawmill went up on Nantasket Brook, which makes it a working piece of the town’s history rather than a decorative one. Hinkley Pond is managed by Medfield Parks and Recreation as a man-made swimming area.
Rocky Woods, 491 acres with Echo Pond and views from Cedar Hill, sits on the town’s other side and is managed by the Trustees. Between the town ponds, the reservoir land and Rocky Woods, Medfield is a town where outdoor time is the default and the question is which water.
The land the town kept
The Conservation Commission’s own property descriptions are worth reading if you want to understand the place: former farmland, forested upland, wetland, small fields and a barn, with town land on both sides. It kept the fields and the woods and put the houses around them.
A family that moves to Medfield for that usually wants the same thing for their kids, which is time outside with a structure to it. Two evenings a week on a mat is a small, cheap version of that, and it is indoors in February, which the fields are not.
The other hill
Noon Hill is the second Trustees property in town, 204 acres with Holt Pond and trails that run into the neighbouring reservation. Between Noon Hill, Rocky Woods and the five town ponds, Medfield has more water and trail than most residents get through in a summer. It is also the reason a 25 minute drive to a gym is not automatically a no: people here already drive to the trailhead they want.
Medfield High athletics
Medfield High School runs a full interscholastic athletics program through its own athletic department, with the usual three-season structure. For a family already doing the school sports circuit, jiu-jitsu is the one activity that does not have a season, does not require a tryout, and does not stop in November.
What Canton runs
Canton’s adult timetable:
- Tuesday and Thursday, 6 PM: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
- Monday and Wednesday, 7 PM: Grappling (no-gi)
- Saturday, 11 AM: Grappling
- Monday and Wednesday, 6 PM and Tuesday and Thursday, 7 PM: Kickboxing
- Saturday, 12 PM: open mat
Kids
Monday through Thursday, the kids’ classes run at 5 PM (3 to 5 years), 5:30 (6 to 9) and 6:15 (10 to 13). One band per class, and the times stack for a family with two kids.
Is 25 minutes too far?
For a lot of people, honestly, yes, and it is better to say so. If you train twice a week, 25 minutes each way is an hour and forty minutes of driving a week. The people who make it work from Medfield are usually the ones who pair the trip: a 6 PM class on a Tuesday while a kid is in Cobras at 6:15, or a Saturday morning that doubles as the week’s outing.
If that is not your week, the honest alternative is to come once a week and use Saturday open mat as the second session, or to treat the intro as the test. Some rooms are worth the drive. This is how you find out.
The first visit
You begin with a free intro of about 15 minutes: a tour, how the classes and the membership work, and a short lesson on the mat so you have already been on the floor. Bring shorts and a T-shirt.
What a Medfield week looks like
Practical version: Tuesday and Thursday jiu-jitsu at 6 PM, with a parent taking the same trip while a kid is in Cobras at 6:15, and Saturday open mat at noon as the third session when the week allows. If the drive worries you, do the intro on a Saturday first. It is free, it takes 15 minutes, and it answers the only question that matters.
How to start from Medfield
The form on this page takes a program, a location and a phone number, and someone calls you back. Canton 781-499-8302, Raynham 508-219-0418.