Gerberoy, Etratet and Beuvon-En-Auge, France

I saw a picture of Etretat in a museum; it was a favorite for impressionist painters and we decided to go find it when we were in Normandy; we stayed in Honfleur, also a beautiful town and did a day trip to Etretat:
https://janettravels.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/etretat-the-impressionists-had-an-eye-for-a-beautiful-place/
You are so right; this place was just wonderful. Wish we had also known about the other towns you mention and we would have tried those as well.

Thanks for the tips! I used "the most beautiful villages of France" website in planning my trip 2 summers ago. It is a great resource. We enjoyed Salers in Cantal (stayed there 2 nights). I believe there is a book for these villages as well. We also stayed in Conques and Puycelsi as well. Some of the villages are really quiet -- even too quiet (and I like quiet places, but a couple we visited seemed more like museums than places where people still live).

In our experience the 'beautiful villages' are no longer real places for the most part. It is like visiting Epcot Center. We couldn't even find a bakery in Cologne la Rouge which was filled with tour buses and souvenir shops and cafes. The red buildings were charming but felt grossly over restored. Pretty much all cute villages in France though have tourist economies or they are bedroom communities (many of those near Paris for example where people live and then commute into Paris to work). If on the off chance you encounter a charming small village that is not a tourist haven, you will be hard pressed to find a cup of coffee as they often have no economic life during the day. 30 or 40 years ago we visited many of these in France and Italy; charming but no local economy. Today those same villages are disneyland like tourist stops filled with places to buy soap, herbs, souvenirs and lunch. Etretat was your classic seaside resort -- and those have always been kitchy tourist stops with their own sea town charm. The thing about Etretat is the hike along the cliffs with the 3 great sea arches. It will be stunning regardless of what happens to the town.

Absolutely correct, Janet. My husband went to St. Cirq La Popee about seven years ago and found one dusty parking area and two boutiques. It has always been know as having a beatiful setting. Then it won the first Most Beautiful Village competition four years ago. We went back three days ago: six paved parking lots, craft/artist shops, souvenir shops, restaurants, people climbing everywhere. It's a mixed bag of positive and negative. It employs many people, but only thirty people live there in winter, 200 in summer, and tens of thousands of visitors.

I just hope Conques doesn't turn into a circus like so many other villages.

Edit: I think the ones that have become immitations of their former selves are the ones at the top of the list. There are a lot that are exactly as you descibe and a pleasure ti stroll.

Are Beynac and Dome on the lists because they've certainly become mob scenes. Once the village constructs parking lots, including ones to handle busses, it's all over. Keep driving except for the view.

Thanks for the replies.
We have a couple that are friends and live in Paris. They knew we would be traveling by car and just wanted to make certain that if we were 30 minutes away from one of these scenic villages that it would probably be worth the drive to see it. When we drove into Gerberoy 2 weeks ago it looked asleep......NOTHING was open. There was one restaurant and one small closed coffee shop. One resident kept coming in and out of his house working on his yard and I got the feeling that he was not accustomed to visitors. I saw a small hotel sign on a door, tried knocking on the door to go in and no one answered. Their tiny tourist office was open and the gracious lady wanted us to know about their rose festival in June. It looked like a postcard.....SO charming. I will never forget that view of quaint cozy homes on a cobblestone street with gorgeous roses all over the houses.
A young lady manning the tourist desk at Beuvon-En-Auge told us when we were there that the restrictions for these villages are very strict....that these small towns have to meet a lot of standards or they cannot remain on the list.
These three spots delighted me....hope they will someone else!

Conques did not seem over-run when we were there. I had wanted to go there for many years but it's not really on the way to anything so you have to make an effort to go there. It does depend on tourists -- it always has with it's magnificent church and being on the route to Santiago de Compestela. I thought it was busy enough, but not too busy. Some things are still just in French -- like the talk by a priest about the church in the evening but most things were accessible to English speakers. We were there in June.

Salers was also nice. They had a fête going on to celebrate local foods -- mostly cheese -- and music. It was busy due to the fête but not over-run.

I thought that Flavigny-sur-Ozerain was pretty dead. Again we were there in June.