Ancestry DNA tests?

[Confusedasper]

What do they tell you? How is the ethnicity broken down?

My grandmother was adopted. All I know is her parents came to UK from abroad.

I'm curious and wondered how accurate it is to determine where?

@Confusedasper

Do you know when and where your grandmother was born, OP?

Not from the top of my head only that is was a mining village in Wales. That her father was running from somewhere so started working in the mines 😅 i would have to get back to you after questioning my mum tomorrow.
I guess my curiosity has peaked because my daughter has really distinguishable features and wondered if it came from there. I don't know anything about genetics so might come across ignorant 😅

My nan was adopted by a lovely couple, I don't know what happened to her birth parents from there.

I had one as a present. It’s not processed yet but I am not expecting anything exotic. Maybe some long-lost cousins.

@Confusedasper

I'm wondering whether you can see an entry for her birth on the Index and then obtain a copy of her birth certificate.

This is a screenshot of an example result screen. On another screen it breaks if down further to tell you which bits come from maternal and paternal sides of your family.
You will also get a list of people you share DNA with and will find many, many distant cousins (I have over 26,000). Most of these you'll never know how you are linked but I have figured out most of the descendents of my grandparents cousins so if your results allowed you to do the same you'd be able to work out quite a bit about where your Nan was from.

The first place to start is to work out if you know your nan's birth name. That is the name that she was registered as when she was born.

If you do, then that makes things very simple. All you need to do is to go to the General Register Office website and you can get a copy of your nan's birth certificate which will show her mother and also her father if they were married.

If you don't know her birth name, and you only know her adopted name then things become a bit trickier. The General Register Office holds the information that links adopted names to birth names, but they don't give this out to the public.

Instead, you have to use an "intermediary agency" and pay them for doing it. It is explained here in detail:

http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/contact/intermediaries/questionsanswersrelatives.htm

This should give you details of who the birth parents were and also possibly information about why your nan was adopted.
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With regard to your original question about Ancestry DNA tests here is a map that shows all the different regions that they differentiate:

https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/ancestrydna-regions

Your DNA results will come from a number of these different regions.

One thing I would suggest if you do decide to do a DNA test is to also get your mum to do one as well (I presume that your nan has passed away?). The reason for doing this is that since she is a generation older than you she is a generation closer to your nan and so shares more of her DNA than you do.

This also means that you are likely to find more relatives of your nan from your mum's DNA than from your's.
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For example, on Ancestry it says that I have 21,700 DNA matches.

Both of my parents have done their DNA on Ancestry as well and my dad has 20,900 matches and my mum has 24,700.

So, by going back to an earlier generation it has more than doubled the number of DNA matches. From 21,700 for just myself to 45,600 from both of my parents DNA.