Circumventing gradlew connection timed outs

If like me you're having problems getting a gradle distribution via gradlew, perhaps becuaseof a shaky connection, download the target distribution e.g. https://downloads.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-2.2-all.zip and copy it to

$HOME/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-<VERSION>-all/<random string>/gradle-<VERSION>-all.zip.

Check the $HOME/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-<VERSION>-all/ directory to determine the random directory name