Local install won’t work without internet

I have a local install (using Vangrant and VVV) and it works absolutely fine with internet. But without internet, it hangs on “connecting” indefinitely. I think it’s trying to talk to wordpress.org and gravatar.com

Is there a way to disable these connection attempts when there is no internet present?

Try define('WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL', true); in your wp-config.php.

This will mean updates and downloading themes and plugins will fail, although you can still add plugins by dragging them to your plugin folder.