@AppLee Thank you to yourself and @arubislander for replying.
I took another look the next morning and I can see it does what you say, making no attempt to connect wirelessly. I think there were a lot of variables to consider the previous evening and I gained the impression it was trying to use the poor outbound wireless connection.
I'm more sure now the mobile signal was also very poor and intermittent (it was a sea-front camp site). So I think the phone (Volla X23) did the best it could.