A Tourist glossy produced by the North Wessex Downs AONB boasts that the recreational  activities of the Downs include "zorbing", rolling down hills. Rolling down hills was indeed a traditional English pastime. Jane Grigson, (Good Things p.275) repeats from Kettner's Book of the Table, (1877) that the young folk of Northamptonshire after eating as much gooseberry fool as they possibly can used frequently to roll down a hill and begin eating again. Without references, since "conversation in the Coronation Tap, Bristol, circa 1982" lacks academic gravitas, is an anecdote about Dr Johnson declaring that he hadn't had a good roll for years before launching himself downhill. Perhaps kids used to chalk on the walls of Lichfield "Sammy Johnson is a Zorber" but the word didn't make it into his dictionary, nor into OED. I'm intrigued by the term and  would welcome plausible, intelligent suggestions about its provenance and etymology.

Let's Zorb again like we did last zummer

Last summer's Newsletter with its query about zorbing, the sport of rolling down hills, arrived inexcusably late for one member. Instead of berating the secretary for administrative failure, she drew attention to the practice of cheese rolling, which still happens at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire and used to take place at Uffington when the Horse was scoured. Compared with chasing a 9lb cheese down a sixty-degree slope, zorbing is for wimps.  Elizabeth Kennet also pointed to the Italian   sorba - a "sorb apple", a fruit that according to Jane Grigson, makes good liqueur and poor cider, or a "blow", with its associated verb sorbare "to beat", hence sorbattere, "to make ice cream". One begins to see a connection, though it may be most like a weasel. 

An American friend was as perplexed as everyone else by the word - though as a girl she enjoyed the activity.