Charlie Austin joins QPR fans on Three Peaks Climb, raising £22,000 for West London charity

Snowdon’s summit on 11 October was windswept enough that the climbers filmed each other just to prove they’d made it. Among them, finishing the UK Three Peaks Challenge alongside a group of Queens Park Rangers supporters, was Charlie Austin, the club’s former striker, who had missed the first two mountains after travel delays and illness kept him and his wife Bianca away from Ben Nevis (pictured) and Scafell Pike.

The climb, completed over 10 and 11 October, has raised more than £22,000 for QPR in the Community Trust, the charity’s arm of the Shepherd’s Bush club that works across seven west London boroughs on health, education and social inclusion projects for children, young people and families. Most of the group, including supporters Ben and Millie White, completed all three ascents within the strict 24-hour window the challenge demands. Charlie and Bianca Austin joined for the final push up Snowdon once they were able to travel.

It was the Austins who proposed the idea in the first place, according to the source material, with regular Loftus Road fans signing up once word got round. Also among the climbers was Justin Stone from the Trust’s own staff, who picked up a minor Achilles injury somewhere across the three peaks, a detail that says something about what a 24-hour, three-mountain, three-nation challenge actually costs the people who attempt it.

“The weather conditions, as you can imagine, were not very good,” Charlie Austin said after the group reached Snowdon’s summit.

For Ben White, whose fundraising page remains open for donations, the climb was as much about visibility as money. “QPR means so much to our family,” he said. “But what is less well known is how much the club does away from football through the trust.” QPR in the Community Trust, founded in 1994 and granted charitable status in 2009, works with an estimated 23,000 people a year across west London, running programmes that range from a football scheme for children with Down’s syndrome to a social club for over-60s tackling isolation.

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